Employees remember job perks, frustrations

By Pauline Vu
Daily Bruin Senior Staff

Neal Kleiner’s most memorable athletic memory in the past
five years was the 1996 football game against USC, when UCLA, down
by 17 points with only minutes to go, managed to tie the game and
then win it in overtime.

“It was an unbelievable game,” Kleiner said,
recalling all the Bruin fans who, thinking the cause hopeless,
began to leave early. “Hell, even ‘SC people were
leaving. They thought it was locked up.

“As it got closer and closer, people stopped leaving
because they were glued down to the end,” he continued.
“Now I especially remember the ‘SC big shot fans who
came down from the press box to congratulate ‘SC Coach (John)
Robinson and how bitterly they were disappointed.”

Kleiner would be in a good position to remember that particular
scene. He was, after all, working that game as part of the event
management staff ““ one of the blue and yellow-jacketed people
at football and basketball games who take your ticket and make sure
you’re sitting where you’re supposed to be sitting.

The event management staffers are among Bruin athletics’
biggest fans. They’re at all the games and get to witness
them from a different angle than that of UCLA students, the angle
that deals with fans. Especially opposing fans.

A few years ago at a women’s basketball game against
Stanford, Warren Woodburn recalled telling a Cardinal fan to leave
the game because he wouldn’t get off the railing.

The fan thought Woodburn was picking on him because he wore a
Stanford sweater and told Woodburn so. Woodburn kicked him out
anyway, because, after all, he wasn’t supposed to be standing
on the railing.

“I don’t pick out people just to pick on
them,” he said.

Warren’s wife, Marjorie, has also dealt with a hostile
fan. When Pauley Pavilion was hosting the 1998 Women’s
Gymnastics NCAA Championships, Marjorie recalled a University of
Georgia fan who lashed out at her for trying to instruct the woman
where to sit. It was so bad that when the event was over, the
woman’s husband came over to Marjorie and apologized. His
wife was a ways ahead of him at the time.

“They’re just kinda sarcastic,” Marjorie said
of Georgia’s women’s gymnastics fans.
“They’ve won so many, they just think they’re
high and mighty.”

“It’s just that people don’t want to go along
with the rules,” she added.

Kleiner and event management supervisor Lori Lamar both recalled
working football games at the Rose Bowl on days that were so hot
there was an equal amount of drama in the stands as on the
field.

At the Michigan game earlier this season, they recounted all the
people who they had to help because of the 115-degree heat.

“That was the hottest and most difficult game I’ve
ever worked. I’ve never seen so many people sick and passing
out,” Kleiner said. “There were more people laying down
sick than even the paramedics could handle.”

At one point, Kleiner ran down to the field to get some tape
from the football student trainers, as there was one girl who
fainted and cut herself when she fell. The paramedics could only
take care of the most severe cases.

“I don’t know how many they ended up taking to the
hospital that day,” Kleiner said.

Lamar recalled that a very red man came into the event
management tent asking for sun block, “just looking like he
was about to die.” When they gave it to him he put two little
dabs on his face.

“It was like, “˜No honey,'” Lamar said.
They grabbed his hands and poured the sun block in. “People
from the east coast don’t understand the sun,” she
added with a laugh.

There have also been games when the workers have had to beware
of fans. At this year’s men’s basketball game against
Arizona at Pauley Pavilion, as the Bruins played better and better
and it looked like an upset was in the works, Kleiner could tell
the crowd was just itching to rush the court.

Knowing there was no way event management could stop the hungry
crowd, they moved the reporters and all the tables on press row so
that the fans could safely rush the court.

“You could tell they were ready to rush at the end of
regulation, and then it went into overtime,” Kleiner said.
“You could see the momentum there.”

Event management often works with some athletes and coaches
themselves. Warren recalled working at the pro beach volleyball
tournament that took place at the Los Angeles Tennis Center in
1997. A blond man with a pink hat approached him and wanted to
enter the courts in a side entrance. Warren refused to let him
past, and the man had to find another way in. Later, Warren was
telling co-workers, “Hey, some guy in a pink hat wanted to do
this,” and they told him, “Oh, that’s Karch
Kiraly.”

Kiraly, a four-time Olympian, only happens to be a UCLA alum and
one of the greatest volleyball players of all time.

Another incident that sticks out in Warren’s mind was
another meet between Georgia and UCLA at the Wooden Center.

“They were just kicking our butt. One of the (Georgia)
girls fell off the balance beam and then giggled and got back on
the beam. The coach went over and told her, “˜Get off.
You’re done,'” Warren recalled.

He was curious. Why did the coach pull her gymnast off
mid-routine when Georgia was already solidly beating UCLA?

The coach answered simply, “I want her to be
serious.”

That taught Warren something about high-level athletics:
“Don’t mess around even though you’re kicking
somebody’s butt. That was the girl’s wake-up
call.”

For the event staffers, there are many positives to their
job.

Kleiner continually praises the die-hard student fans who come
out to every game no matter how the team is doing. He’s
gotten to know many of them and last year when the Kapono headband
was the latest craze in Pauley, the fans insisted Kleiner wear one
as well.

“My fondest memories are just seeing the die-hards come in
as young men and women and leave four or five years later … just
to see them grow,” he said.

The same goes for the athletes. Kleiner has watched as
football’s Tony White and men’s basketball’s Earl
Watson grew from freshmen to seniors, and boys to men.

“Watson has so much heart. He had ability but he had even
more heart than ability. He truly became one of the favorites of
the fans, not just me,” Kleiner said. “Tony White is a
classy young man on and off the field. He’s always a
gentleman.”

Warren likewise pointed out being able to chat with John Wooden
at basketball games as a positive for being an event management
staffer.

“He’s probably one of the nicest people you’ll
ever meet,” he said. “He comes in early at the
basketball games a lot of times, so he’s sitting there at his
seat and we get to talk to him.”

But the biggest positive for the event staffers, the one that
gets them coming back to this part-time job year after year, is the
chance to watch one of the best teams in the nation compete.

“It’s like they pay me to watch the game,”
Warren said. “You couldn’t ask for better.”