Equipping the Rams and the Next Generation
O’Hair and her student crew run a smooth operation
Mike Brohard
Her natural inclination was to help people. Possibly a nurse. Maybe a teacher.
In the end, Shannon O’Hair hit the mark of being a mentor. Her classroom can look a bit cluttered at times, and the lessons she doles out are not classic literature, nor are they algebraic or scientific equations.
Her pupils learn to make Colorado State’s football team look good, operate at practice without a hitch, meet needs before they are even recognized and even have a botched beginning of a road trip come off without a single question asked.
Being the head equipment manager of a Division I college football team wasn’t on her list of possibilities, but here she is at Colorado State killing the assignment.
“I didn't know anything about equipment until my senior year of high school when I was, ‘oh, this is kind of cool.’ It'd be cool to do something like this in college,” O’Hair said. “Then they're like, all right, there's athletic training, there's equipment. I thought I wanted to do something more hands-on, so that's how I got into the field of equipment.
“But never in a million years, especially in the position I'm in now, did I think I’d be doing this. Absolutely not.”
A way to make ends meet in college. She worked in the Nevada equipment room while pursuing her bachelor’s degree in general studies while minoring in criminal justice and addiction treatment, earned in 2018. She stuck with the program as an intern before being named the head football equipment manager for the Wolf Pack in 2020.
She’d done stints at a playoff game in 2016 for the Green Bay Packers, then again in 2017 and a regular season game for the team in 2019. Jay Norvell hired her when the opportunity was presented at Colorado State.
Jordon Simmons, Colorado State’s assistant coach and head speed and strength coach, has seen her grow from day one, constantly amazed with the precision with which she does her tasks.
“She's incredible. She's extremely organized, extremely driven,” he said. “I think her experiences with the NFL really helped her kind of see the vision that she wanted for her operation and how she wanted things to run. I mean, I used to work in the equipment room growing up for the Carolina Panthers for years and years, and I seriously put Shannon and the way she does things up there with anyone I've been around. It's great to see her succeed. She loves what she does.”
Which shows in her day-to-day. She may be vertically challenged, but her persona comes in mythic proportions, breathing positivity like a dragon spits fire. She’s in tune with what her team needs – players and coaches alike – and has tasks set before requested.
Her job is not to function in the equipment room alone, tending to laundry, the pads the players wear, the special requests for personal fits, the detail of the helmets which change constantly with promotional games. It’s not just packing everything needed for a road trip and getting it on and off the plane and into hotels and visiting locker rooms, it’s every day at practice. The headsets the coaches use are fully charged and connected, having the tackling dummies in place, and balls at the ready for drills all over the field.
But her true passion comes in teaching the nine students she has on staff, all of whom take on their approach to a long and task-filled day with the same bright outlook as she does.
A master instructor, indeed.
“I think it's definitely awesome to see Shannon in this position just because it is so very male-dominated,” said student Mikayla Jacobs, who has been on staff for a few years. “I think having Shannon as a boss … I wouldn't be where I am now. I think I would definitely be brought down by people's comments or stuff like that but seeing how hard she works definitely keeps my spirits up knowing that I do have a place in this industry if I did want it, and it's just really inspiring actually.”
Jacobs has been around long enough to have been a student worker when Brendan Bolan was, and after serving his time as a student and spending time with the Indianapolis Colts and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, he returned to be O’Hair’s assistant.
O’Hair is one of four women who are head equipment managers at the Division I level, joined by Paulina Mihelich at New Mexico State, Ashley Nowak of New Mexico and Nevada’s Gabbie Garlow – who was a student under O’Hair. She’s building her own equipment tree already, and the four of them converse weekly in a group chat.
The true measure of how well O’Hair performs her tasks comes from watching how her students operate. They are detail-oriented, the same as she is, passionate about doing things right and willing to do the hard work.
They don’t mind being the last on the plane for a road trip, having unloaded the buses and transferring all the player’s equipment and the team’s needs to the aircraft. Nor do they shutter about being the first off, not even when landing at 6:30 a.m., after an 8 p.m., kickoff in California. They exit, unload the cargo, pack it away and head off to Canvas Stadium where another two hours of work awaits them.
“I like the game days. Game days, being involved and just being on the field and assisting players with whatever they need game-wise,” said Joey Cavallaro, who spent his first two years as a Division III football player in Dubuque, Iowa. “That's kind of my favorite thing.
“I like to be involved in the strategic aspect of the game. Just being there whenever people need any type of equipment help, especially with the quarterbacks because I work with the quarterbacks. Sometimes they need higher needs than other position groups. Hand warmers, they have the coach-to-player mics, and they have ear covers in their helmets for loud games. I think it's so cool taking part in all that strategy work.”
I mean, it's just her composure and her ability to think clearly in stressful situations is really impressive.Jordon Simmons
The nuanced details can be a chore, but just as rewarding, and as a student under O’Hair, they’ll get their fill of doing everything at one point or another. That includes laundry duty or packing each player’s cubby with all their needs each day for practice. They pay attention, memorizing the special requests of the players they equip.
It also means detailing helmets for each game, switching from green to white and the various decals required for the white ones, be it the Orange Out or State Pride, with the Snow Day design added this season. Whatever the team wears for the upcoming game, they will practice in the other color. That gives the students time to detail the helmets, taking out scratches and applying the new decals.
“I definitely would say my favorite part is game days, but also the internal stuff like decaling helmets, really putting the work in with the uniforms,” Jacobs said. “Seeing that product go out on the field, it's like, ‘oh, I worked really hard on that helmet,’ and seeing it on someone, that's really cool. When you see your work on TV, I think.”
Cavallaro agreed those days come with an advanced bit of pride, especially when UniSwag calls the Ag Day uniforms the best of the year, one season after the State Pride uniforms were ranked second.
It takes time and care. At the start for the students, each helmet takes an hour to prepare. Now, they say they’ve got it cut down to 30 minutes. Per helmet, multiplied by 70-plus, each and every week.
“I just think practice makes perfect, and that's with everything that comes,” Jacobs said. “Once you finally find those landmarks on the helmet, like where you line the ‘C’ up or where you line that Aggie up, it gets easier and you can do it a lot faster, but it’s just making sure it always looks perfect no matter who it is. If it's a player that doesn't play, you’re still making sure it looks perfect because you never know.”
All of them fulltime students, each of them working 40 hours a week in the equipment room. The days can drag at times, but a bond is developed among the group through a shared experience of long hours followed by hours of studying for class.
There’s work to do to make sure the players are fitted for practice. Then it’s out to the field to have the area set up so the team can move from one period of work to the other seamlessly, never having to wait for something to be set up.
They might snap football underhand to quarterbacks during drills. They could be assigned to the chain gang, or even don a referee’s jersey, possibly feed balls into a JUG’s machine for returners to get in some reps.
“Honestly, I didn't really think about it until I kind of just got involved in it. I kind of just took some steps up and tried to be more involved because I find that fun,” Cavallaro said. “Literally, at all the practices, I'm going to catch footballs from Division I quarterbacks and I'm getting paid to do it. What's better than that? Perfect footballs are going to help out with drills and stuff like that. I love the practice aspect, honestly.”
Being one of the few women in the field is something O’Hair acknowledges, but ask her or the people around her, she’s not about to give herself credit for her unique place in the sport or for the superb nature for which her department runs.
The place she allows herself to feel a bit of pride is with her students. A proud teacher.
“I love them. They're literally all my children. They're awesome,” O’Hair said. “They are, I will do anything for them. It's so cool seeing them grow up. When they first started here, it was kind of like they were shy, quiet, and now they're making the changes, they're making the decisions. They have the confidence to make those decisions.
“Jonah (McCown) is a prime example. He was Mr. Ask-a-thousand-questions-a-day, but now he knows what to do. He’ll say, ‘let's do this,’ and I’ll tell him that works.”
Just like their mentor. One of her most trying road trips came in her first season, in the middle of the pandemic during one of the longest road trips of the year.
O’Hair arrived at the airport waiting for the team to arrive when it hit her.
“The wrong plane was booked and we got to the tarmac, and Shannon had to -- on the fly -- decide what goes and what stays. What can we leave behind to make this work without it affecting the day-to-day operation of everything?
“I knew, and actually Colton (Bosnos) knew, but other than us, no one on the plane had any clue that that happened because of how efficient she was with being able to decide what goes where, get it done. It's really impressive how she … I mean, it's just her composure and her ability to think clearly in stressful situations is really impressive.”
What O’Hair and her students pull off weekly goes rather unnoticed by most in the outside world. If you get to a home game early and watch pregame, you might see aiding warmup without realizing everything set up on the sidelines was taken care of by the equipment crew long before the team arrived.
She’s fine with that, and so are her students. It’s a labor of love for them all. While O’Hair is not about to pat herself on the back, she’ll do so for her students and takes great pride when others do the same.
“It's just ‘OK, it's just a day-to-day.’ But when somebody like Rocky (Beers) or JB (Jackson Brousseau) or whoever comes back here, they're like, ‘oh, I just want to say hi, thank you for everything. The gear's great.’
“I'm like, thank you for just taking 10 seconds out of your day and thanking us. They see all the work we put in and all we have to do to make them look good and feel good and feel comfortable and all that stuff. So, all those little thank yous mean the world.”
Same as her students mean the world to her. Those who may eventually stay in the field or those who will have paths carry them in other directions. She’s found a way to inspire them all, no matter where life will lead them. You can bet she’ll know where each path will lead them eventually.
As the students will tell you, she’s taught them well, improved their time on campus even when the work was hard. For some, because the work was hard. The kind of knowledge and confidence which can’t come from a textbook.
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