MAKING THE TRIP The pilot announces over the intercom that the
flight will take only 40 minutes. After wishing the team good luck, he adds, "The weather in Minne- apolis is the same as it is here … cold.''
WEDNESDAY, 3:35 P.M. Takeoff.
Luke Wainwright is already having a good day. Both the charter bus — which took the team from the Kohl Center to Wisconsin Aviation — and the charter plane are on time. Plus, the sack lunches for the players are on-
board. As the director of basketball operations, Wain-
wright worries about such things, and much more. Part of his job is to make sure the Badgers get from Point A to Point B and back again with no glitches.
"There are a lot of unnerving feelings with the things that you don't have control over,'' he said. That's because he's so dependent on so many others doing their job, so he can do his. That would include the bus company, the airline, the hotel staff, the caterers and so on and so forth. "Last year was tough,'' Wainwright said of his
first go-around in the Ops position after three years as a manager. "Last year was hard to sleep even on nights when there wasn't travel the next day.''
Wainwright has check lists for check lists, it
seems. "I have a check list for the hotel,'' he said. "I
have a check list if it's a flight or a bus trip, a check list for the pre-travel, a check list for the post- travel and a check list for the travel contacts. "Getting back to the original question — Do I
sleep the night before a road trip? — that (the nu- merous check lists) kind of gives me the peace of mind to fall asleep.'' The 26-year-old Wainwright wants to be a coach. He played two years of basketball at Edge- wood College before transferring to the UW, where he got his degree in history.
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DAVID STLUKA
