Logistics behind the madness

It’s mid March — selection Sunday — the day when 68 teams are picked to play in the men’s NCAA Final Four basketball tournament. For Short’s Travel Management, it’s the calm before the storm. Within the next 24 hours, Short’s will enter a virtual March madness of their own.

The Waterloo, Iowa based company is tasked each spring with setting up travel arrangements for the 132 collegiate teams that play in the men’s and women’s Final Four tournaments, and another 32 in the NIT tournament. Each team in the Final Four has an entourage of 75 players, coaches, band members and other personnel that need to get from point A to point B as efficiently as possible. Thousands of people and their gear are moved on a moment’s notice.

“It’s a logistics nightmare,” says Short’s chief executive officer David LeCompte, who works from his home in Whitefish.

Short’s has handled the travel arrangements for the NCAA championships for eight years. Along with the Final Four tournaments, the company deals with ice hockey, track and field, baseball and FCS football, among other sports. Short’s was directly responsible for making sure the University of Montana Grizzlies basketball team made it from Missoula to Albuquerque, N.M., earlier this month for their first-round game with Wisconsin.

The Monday after selection Sunday is the most hectic day, LeCompte says. Finding 75 seats for a team on commercial flights in nearly impossible. Most teams travel on charter planes, often as big as a Boeing 737. A single plane might carry four teams in one day as it goes from coast to coast.

The action picks up after the first round when winners move on to another city and losers are sent packing.

“Before selection Sunday, we don’t know who’s going where,” LeCompte said. “Then we don’t know who’s coming home.”

LeCompte says they’ve automated the entire process to a point, but with so many variables — weather delays being one — not even the most sophisticated software is up to the task.

“We brought in mathematicians to build a program to optimize the flow,” LeCompte said. “The reality is there are so many variables, it couldn’t handle it.”

Instead, the company has a mission control in Iowa of 23 employees dedicated to moving teams across the country. They even bring in a back-up generator to keep the system afloat in case power is lost.

“We can’t afford to be down even for 30 minutes,” he said. “That would wreak havoc.”

Travel arrangements get easier as the tourney goes on, LeCompte said, “but then hockey happens.”

The men’s Frozen Four NCAA ice hockey tournament kicks off April 5, and the “logistics nightmare” starts all over again.

LeCompte and his family first visited Whitefish three years ago on a summer trip and fell in love with the area. They came back in the winter and eventually enrolled their three children in the school system. LeCompte works from home about 75 percent of the time — although he says his wife might disagree. He visits the Iowa office three times a year and spends the rest of his time on the road with clients.

The growing company also works with the LPGA women’s golf league and has picked up NASCAR as a client.

As for perks of the job? There are a few.

LeCompte was most recently at the Daytona 500 and he’s seen some great Final Four action over the years.

“It’s a fun and challenging job,” LeCompte said.