First, Jessika Carringtonβs smiled β the seventh-ranked Arizona Wildcats had just won their first game of the season.
Then came the sigh of relief. Arizona actually hosted a game, and it went off without a hitch.
Thatβs a big accomplishment in these unusual times.
Carrington is in her fourth season as Arizonaβs director of operations. If her name doesnβt sound familiar, itβs because it really shouldnβt. Carrington does work behind the scenes so that Adia Barnes can coach and her players can play.
She views her role as βtaking care of our team and Adia.β The seventh-ranked Wildcats will host No. 9 UCLA on Friday night in the Pac-12 opener for both teams.
Among her many duties, Carrington handles all the logistics for the womenβs basketball program. When the Wildcats travel, Carrington will pick up a rental car so one of the coaches can drive to watch a recruit play. She makes sure the smoothies are in the Wildcatsβ hands more than an hour before practice. She helps UA players get their scholarship money.
Barnes calls her βthe backbone of our program.β
βEverything you can think of, she makes the program go,β Barnes said. βWithout her, weβd probably implode. Itβs all the little things. Itβs the things that people donβt appreciate or realize β you take it for granted.β
Yet Barnes doesnβt. She knows how valuable Carrington is, especially in the midst of a pandemic.
βIf she were out with COVID, that would be a problem. We would be like, βAh!β You would see a lot of gray hair,β Barnes laughed. βIt would be hard, because a lot of us donβt even know all the stuff she does, right? There are so many layers to everything she does. I value her tremendously. I think sheβs wonderful. Sheβs like family and the players love her. Everything about our program flows smoothly because of her. β¦ Without her, it would be impossible for me to do all the things I have to do. Sheβs awesome.β
There are more things than ever on Carringtonβs to-do list. She rolls with it. Basketball has been a major part of Carringtonβs life since her undergraduate days, when she served as a team manager at the University of Oklahoma. She moved to the Soonersβ ticket office as a graduate student before moving on to USC, where she spent 2013-17 as the administrative assistant to Trojans coach Cynthia Cooper-Dyke.
βI know it sounds funny, but Iβve actually enjoyed the challenge,β Carrington said.
That challenge includes many things that she never expected.
A week before the season tipped off, Carrington received a 38-page handbook from the Pac-12 with guidelines for games and travel. After a few iterations, itβs now grown to 42 pages.
One of the guidelines has to do with the bench. The Pac-12 recommended that teams have two rows of 12 seats, with the remaining six on the baseline.
It was hard for Carrington to envision all the options for the Wildcats, so she asked if she could see what the UA menβs team was doing. Finally, after many discussions with UA facilities team, she found a solution: three rows with seven chairs each and the rest on the baseline.
The other tricky part is travel. In a typical year, Carrington has all her travel plans finished in October. Now she only has the plans completed for their first Pac-12 trip to Colorado and Utah. She had to cut down her traveling party and has to know everything about the counties each school is in, as well as their protocols β including testing, meeting spaces, food, and locker rooms. Some counties restrict how many people can be in a hotel meeting room when they watch film. To help out with this, other schools will allow Arizona to use a room in their arenas.
Carrington let her counterparts at UCLA and USC know that Tucson has a curfew β just in case they want food late at night when they visit this weekend.
And for the first time Carrington is involved in the medical side of things. Usually, trainer Jessie Joseph handles everything. Now, Carrington works alongside Joseph and Randy Cohen to help determine when the Wildcats will take their COVID-19 tests. The same goes for their opponents on game days.
She is nervous about what happens when teams test five hours before the game.
βIβm holding my breath every game day,β Carrington said. βIf there is a false positive, there is no retest, so that player and whoever theyβve had high contact with sits out. How many games have already been canceled because of a test? Thatβs my biggest concern.β
Sundayβs opener against NAU was an adjustment for everyone. The strangest moment might have come at the end.
βThis hadnβt crossed my mind β not running out of the tunnel with smoke and lights,β Carrington said.
βWe did a little run line. At the end, instead of high-fiving the other team, we just waved. When we did it, it was super awkward.β
But they got through it. Carrington said she hopes that each game, things will get easier β even though she is always ready for last-minute changes.
βI love watching the players grow up and transform and I get to be part of that process,β Carrington said. βBasketball has always been a huge part of my life. I grew up playing and just wasnβt good enough to play in college. I did the next best thing and became a student manager. That experience within itself was life-molding. Iβm here today because of the experience I had with the womenβs basketball team at Oklahoma. β¦ That opportunity gave me so much. It taught me how to be disciplined, how to never stop working for your goals, mental toughness, long days, short nights.
βI guess, more simply put β¦ I love what I do because now I get to give what I was given.β
Rim shots
- UA forward Sevval Gul has entered the transfer portal and will leave the program. The 6-foot-3-inch Gul did not see action in the NAU game. Last year, she played in 16 games and averaged 1.6 points and 1.4 rebounds.
- All Pac-12 games will include a moment of solidarity immediately following the national anthem. Each team will stand spaced out an in a semi-circle. They will all wear the same shooting shirts and have their own slogans on the back. Arizonaβs is βStronger Together.β
