Hackney became UM's equipment manager in 1981, after starting under the legendary Naseby Rhinehart and before that, in his words, coming to UM and getting “about five, six years more education than God ever intended me to have.”
“I think I was the first kid who was main-streamed in the Bitterroot, I'm not sure,” Hackney joked. “They wanted my ass out of there.”
The two have remained friends through driving rain in Statesboro, Ga., and crystal clear air over Missoula - which didn't stop their charter pilot from flying right over the Garden City and landing in Spokane. As fall drills for Griz football approach - the first practice is Wednesday - they'll be making sure the South Campus practice fields are lined, and that UM's players are garbed in clean clothes for practice and games.
Q: How have things changed over 25 years?
Hack: The changes for us have been all tied into the success of Grizzly athletics. Basketball, football, track and field - the combination of them all. The changes are in the pace and demands that we have now days. It used to be a lot more low-key, if you will. Everything had its cycle: You had your football season; when it was done, you had basketball; when it was done, track and field. Now it's 10 months of the year for every sport. We used to shut down. Now you don't shut down. You just keep going.
Q: When you started here full-time, was it just you and Hack?
Stack: It was me and Steve and we only had about three kids back then. It's evolved to where we have 12, 15 work-study kids now. We have to. The volume of work, the amount of apparel, just the demands of the sports have increased that much.
Q: Tell us about “the loop.”
Stack: Basically, the football players put their T-shirts, their shorts, their undergarments, their socks on that loop. Every day we set up times for them to turn in those loops. And we rotate them through. A kid comes up and says his number, and we give him a clean loop. We don't have a locker system here - we don't have enough space. We just rotate that stuff through the window. If they're in two-a-days, we rotate it through after the first session, wash it, get it ready and after the second session they come in and pick up another clean one. And that's not just football. Volleyball has them, soccer has them. They don't do any of their own stuff.
Hack: Every sport has a certain amount of issue that's daily. It used to be you roll all that stuff in a towel, and throw that in their locker.
Stack: When we used to put things in bags, it was a constant grind. You had to keep stuff drying all the time. With these, that's cut our time down. It's more efficient.
Q: Except when somebody forgets their towel?
Stack: They usually don't.
Hack: If they do, they shake like a wet dog.
Stack: We have a pretty good rapport with the athletes. A lot of the older kids, they'll play with the freshmen at times, and say, ‘Go get this or that.' But most of the time the kids know beforehand what we require of them, and they're pretty good about it.
Q: So how many washers and dryers are back here to handle all this stuff?
Hack: We have two washing machines. One's a 50-pounder, one's an 85-pounder, and two dryers that are 120-pounders. When I started here in '81, we had one single manual washing machine that came off a World War II destroyer. And two driers that held 50 pounds and an old extractor that could pull anything right in half if it wasn't put in there right. That washing machine was put in there in 1953, when they opened the fieldhouse. They'd built it and rebuilt it and couldn't find parts for it anymore. We finally got a new 50-pounder in 1984. Then we got our “precious,” our big new machine. It costs $13-15,000 for one of those. They are industrial strength - all of that stuff is pretty labor intensive. Those machines will run 6-8 hours a day from now through September during all the two-a-days.
Q: Do you have any favorite athletes?
Stack: Corey Mertes, Joe Lehman, (Jon) Talmage. There's so many of them, you can't pick just one kid.
Hack: The one thing we have, the real advantage, is we work so closely with the athletes, that we make a lot of lifelong friendships. You couldn't even list all the kids. It's always been kind of a family thing down there. Kind of an aside from all the pressures they have going, with all their meetings and all the team stuff. This is an area where we have a little different interaction.
Hack: The history of the kids and the success stories of the no-name kids are probably my favorite. Kids from Two Dot, Mont., or kids like Darin Engellant (from Geraldine). Kids from Nowhereville that have pretty good success. Brett Myers - a kid that made a spot for himself by hard work.
Stack: Or Brady Green. He was a 110 percent heart.
Hack: And the screwballs we've had here. We've had some and had some. And they also slid right under the radar.
Stack: Remember Joel Robinson that one time, brought that snake down to the locker room? Big bull snake, about 4fi feet. You could hear the screaming. I went down there and here's this huge bull snake, and the locker room's almost empty because it spooked everybody so bad.
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