Northwood alum and UNC basketball manager Maria Vanderford discusses highlights, disappointments of an unforgettable season.
Maria Vanderford, a current junior at UNC-Chapel Hill and former Northwood student, is one of six managers for the UNC men’s varsity basketball team. She recently showed me around UNC’s basket- ball facilities and discussed her role in the program.
“Please forgive me, because I’m not used to using my keys,” she said, unlocking the door to the Dean Smith Center athletic complex. As we headed downstairs, senior basketball forward Joel James passed us.
“He’s graduating in a couple of weeks, and it’s really sad,” Vanderford said once James was out of earshot. “This was my second season with him.”
Part of Vanderford’s job as a manager is to set out jerseys for the team, help during rebounding drills, order food for players and generally assist the players and coaches. She travels with the team to games and is with them at practices. Vanderford has access to restricted areas like locker rooms, training rooms and basketball courts. The team of basketball managers is an elite group.
“It’s a very competitive program,” Vanderford said. “This year I think we had 15 or 16 JV man- agers…. A lot of it is just your cards falling right. It’s harder for a girl, because there are fewer spots. There are only two spots for girls, and there are four spots for guys.”
Vanderford and senior Maggie Boulton, the other female manager, have a different role than the male managers in one aspect of the job.
“One thing that we do a lot that the guys don’t do is we do the food orders,” Vanderford said. “During the year we’ll get a lot of food for the guys. We’ll do a lot of individual orders. We have to print out menus for these restaurants and then take them to the guys and say, ‘Hey, after practice what do you want to eat?’ like for your entree, your appetizer. They’ll write it down on paper, and then we have
to go type it up; we have to email it to the restau- rant…. We’ll eat the day before a game and the day of a game. If it’s the day before a game, Maggie or I go pick up the food. That’s one thing that the guys don’t really do, and whenever we ask them to go get the food, they’re kind of like, ‘I don’t really know what to do.’”
Vanderford described a typical practice, which she says lasts approximately two hours during the regular season.
“We usually get here at least an hour before a practice,” Vanderford said. “Each one of the six of us…has a job that we have to do. We have one head manager, and then the five of us are under him. My job before practice is to hang out jerseys. The guys always wear the same thing at practice, like a jersey and shorts. Some of them sweat a lot—like the guy that we passed on the way down, he sweats all the time. So during practice he changes his jerseys. [Maggie Boulton] sets out hitting pads and gum and pens.”
Vanderford is not new to the world of basketball and still has connections with Northwood’s basket- ball program.
“I played [basketball] in high school,” Vanderford said. “[Cameron Vernon] was my basketball coach in middle school for a year…. He was my first basket- ball coach in middle school, and then he moved to Northwood, and then he coached me at Northwood. He’s a good family friend as well. I’m going to be his new baby’s godmother, and he’s my confirmation sponsor, so we’re good family friends. I text him every now and then with updates.”
Vanderford calls the members of the basketball team “the 16 brothers that I never had.”
“I never had any brothers growing up,” Vander- ford said. “I have two younger sisters. Everyone always asks, ‘Do you know the guys? Are you friends with the guys?’ Yes, I have a very good re- lationship with every guy on the team. They are all like my big brothers. I saw three of the guys this weekend. I was going to visit one of my friends at her apartment, and they were riding the elevator up with me, and we got off on the same floor. I went one way, and they went another way, and Justin Jackson was like, ‘Hey, Maria, if you need anything just let me know.’ They don’t have to do things like that, but they do. They are all genuinely really nice guys, and I can see them all being my big brothers. If I see them on campus, they’ll say hello. Sometimes they’ll grab me and pick me up, and sometimes you don’t get very nice looks from other girls on campus when they do that… and I’m just like, ‘I’m just their friend. They’re like my brother. It’s not a competition.’”
The most memorable aspect of UNC’s season in the eyes of the public is most likely their near miss at a national championship title. As usual, Vanderford attended the game with the team. She gave an eyewit- ness account of the game’s now-famous final seconds.
“It was under thirty seconds, and Marcus came down [the court], and he shot a shot; it’s a big shot, where he was falling, and he double pump faked,” Vanderford said. “It was a Hail Mary shot almost; there was no way it was going in, because it wasn’t a jump shot. It was a one hand three pointer. And when it left his hand, I was like, ‘There’s no way this is going in.’ I was like, ‘Great. This is it.’ And it went in.”
At that point there were only 4.7 seconds left on the arena’s clock. Villanova scored a final shot at the end of the game and pulled clear for a 77-74 win. Vanderford described the loss as “the worst feeling in the world.”
“So the shot goes in, the confetti comes down,” Vanderford said. “I jump over the fence in my dress; I have spandex underneath, but I was like, ‘I’m not waiting prissy proper to get out right now.’ I jump over the fence, and I have to climb up on the court to go across and get to our locker room, because it’s on the completely opposite side. As I’m walking up on the court…Villanova, I kid you not, they’re right here celebrating, like in a dog pile. It took everything in me not to cry and punch them in the face. The confetti’s hitting me and I’m just like, ‘Maria, don’t cry right now. Don’t cry right now. Don’t cry right now.’”
Though the past season has been one of the most eventful the UNC basketball program has seen in years, Vanderford’s favorite moment was “beating Duke at Duke.” She described her experience after the team’s 76-72 victory.
“So we come back down Franklin Street…on a charter bus coming from Durham…and everyone starts to flood out of the bars…they start hitting the bus, and I was just like, ‘This is awesome,’ Vanderford said. “And I hear Marcus [Paige] behind me say, ‘Wow, this is really neat. This is awesome.’ Just to hear the players say that it actually means something to them and reflecting on it, it’s just really neat.”
– By Adrianne Cleven
