BY BRIAN L. HUCHEL
DANVILLE — It’s national tournament time, with teams from 12 different states descending upon Danville this year for five days of basketball action. And for tournament director Dick Shockey, it was business as usual.
Until this year.
While this time of year means March Madness for some, it means the National Junior College Athletic Association for Shockey. He has coordinated the event at Danville Area Community College for 17 years it has been played at Mary Miller Gymnasium on the DACC campus.
The tournament numbers increased for the 2010 tournament to 16 teams. It’s meant a little more coordination work for Shockey and others.
“We were petty much in the routine when we had 12 teams,” Shockey said on Monday, charactering the day as the “calm before the storm.”
“But some things have changed when we went to 16.”
Shockey said the increase in workload has been more of duplication in services: Establishing contacts with four additional basketball coaches, finding out attendance numbers for the tournament’s banquet, getting local hosts lined up with each team and finding enough people to operate cameras and videotape the games.
Setting up a practice also was a challenge for the teams.
“Running the games is the easy part,” he said, adding he didn’t remember the early transition from eight to 12 teams being so difficult.
The tournament, overall, has been conducted for a quarter century.
Shockey said he has run into some unique problems this year. One school requested a computer lab for its team so the players could do some studying while on the DACC campus.
Shockey admits he is slowly moving toward handing the reins of the tournament to someone else. He said someone else will be gradually worked into the job. But until then, Shockey said he plans to be on for two or three more years.
Things don’t slow down after the tournament for Shockey, who will travel to Colorado Springs, Colo., with other tournament officials early next week to offer the new bid for DACC to host the tournament.
So people already are trying to prepare for next year as they work through this month’s tournament.
“You try to write down all things to consider for 2011,” he said. “If you wait until next year, you forget.”
