Colorado Time - Interview |
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People Behind the SceneThe year was 1976. Jimmy Carter was elected President, the Dow was 859, "Rocky" was big at the box office, a gallon of gas cost 59 cents, and Bob Clauson, who is now Colorado Time Systems' Aquatic Specialist, was named meet manager by the NCAA. He's held the position ever since. How'd he get the job? "I'm lazy," Clauson confessed. "I was working on three large swim meets at Brown University. It was a multi-day event and hundreds of swimmers were involved. All the work had to be done by hand. At one o'clock in the morning I was typing the heat sheets for the next day. I was tired and frustrated. I told a friend, 'A machine could do this. Even a dumb machine could do this.' My friend replied, 'Then, why don't you shut up and make one do it!'" Clauson accepted the challenge and developed a computer program that mechanized the work that had been done by 15 people. "The NCAA got excited about it, and because I'm lazy, I got stuck with the job." Clauson is kidding, of course, The Meet Manager's JobYou won't find the word "lazy" in the meet manager's job description. It's arguably the most challenging position in intercollegiate swimming and diving. Clauson evaluates all the entries and selects the athletes who will participate in the NCAA championships. "One out of every 16 should qualify for the nationals," he explained. "So we can only accept 270 male and 322 female swimmers and divers for the meets. I develop the list of qualifiers and present it to the NCAA." "There's a lot of stress," said NCAA Director of Championships, Wayne Burrow. "Bob is the primary filter. He gets data from more than 100 schools and the coaches are intensely concerned about their athletes. But Bob does a great job handling problems when they come up. He's established great relationships with the coaches and they trust and respect him. "That's what I admire most about him. Bob wants to be sure every student athlete is treated fairly and the coaches understand the rationale behind the decisions that are made. He wants to do things the right way. "Bob's like a computer himself," Burrow said. "He recalls things 20 years ago better than I can remember things that happened in the last 20 minutes. He uses his 'historical archives' to help the Swimming and Diving Committee understand why decisions were made in the past and how they apply to issues we face today." 30+ Year CareerIn three decades, Clauson has missed only three of the men's championships and one of the women's. But he's recently married and wants to cut back on the number of meets he manages each year. An avid outdoorsman, Bob and his wife, Linda, have climbed 40 of Colorado's 14,000-foot-plus peaks. And they're determined to scale the remaining 14. "I can't be meet manager forever," he said. "I'd like to slowly ease out and make sure there's a smooth transition. I care about the NCAA and the swimmers. I want the environment for the Championships to be conducive to the swimmers having a good experience and swimming well." Finding a ReplacementSo Clauson handpicked Brett Anderson to take his place. Anderson, an electrical engineer and training equipment developer at Colorado Time Systems, ran a number of major state and national meets hosted at the University of Minnesota Aquatic Center while he was a student at the university. "We worked a couple of competitions together and I was impressed," said Clauson. "I liked Brett's sense of responsibility and fairness. And he's good under pressure." "It's a cliché, but I told Brett he couldn't fill Bob's shoes. Nobody can," said Burrow. "You need to take the best of what Bob has to offer, but do it your own way." Under Clauson's direction, Anderson worked his first championship events in March. "The entries were far more complicated than I thought they'd be," Anderson admitted. "Bob designed the system and it's very customized. There were a lot of intricacies I wasn't aware of. But everything went well." "It takes a lot of work," said Burrow. "But once the job is complete, you see some of the greatest athletes and swimming and diving in the world. You can sense the pride in the faces of the officials on deck, the coaches and the NCAA representatives. But you especially see it with Bob and Brett. They're the ones who made it happen." |
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