Rylan Howe

Ryan Henderson, Clearwater senior, cleans after the men’s basketball game Saturday night at Allen Fieldhouse. Henderson, a member of Campus Christians, a group responsible for Saturday night’s cleanup, said he had helped with cleanup six times.

Newspaper scraps hid in every crack, lurked under every seat and blanketed the floor of the student section. Oh, if fans just wouldn’t tear up those newspapers.

Then it wouldn’t have taken a group of Campus Christians nine and a half hours to clean Allen Fieldhouse after the Kansas men’s basketball game Saturday and earn $2,000 from the University for their mission fund.

Some members of the group had cleaned the fieldhouse several times before. Heather Jackson, Campus Christians women’s minister and organizer of the cleanup group, guessed that she had done it 14 to 17 times.

Others, like Troy Viland, a junior at North Dakota State, had never even been to the fieldhouse. Viland had come to town to visit friends who were Campus Christians. It turned out he was in for a treat.

As the group of about 30 people gathered in the southwest corner of the court after the game, associate facilities director Jay Ellis walked up to Lanny Maddux, senior director of the Campus Christians.

“It’s gotta be spic-and-span,” Ellis said, warning that the group would be called back the next morning before the women’s basketball game against Colorado if they did a bad job.

Maddux led the group in prayer, asking that they “work hard and be diligent so we don’t have to come back.”

When they started at 6 p.m., all the fans had gone home except a group of autograph hounds waiting for the players outside the locker room. Concession workers locked up and security officer Jesse Cheek braced for a long night. He would have to stay until the group finished.

“Hopefully it won’t take too awfully long,” he said.

The Campus Christians grabbed trash bags and scattered to the upper ends of the stands, dividing themselves as trash collectors and bottle collectors. It was time for a treasure hunt.

The trash people discovered half-eaten hot dogs, ticket stubs, Dippin’ Dots containers, used tissues and napkins, nacho containers, spoons and an umbrella. One person found a bunch of empty Nicorette gum packets.

The bottle hunt wasn’t quite as exciting. There were bottles of Coca-Cola, Sprite and all sorts of other Coke products.

Meanwhile, some people walked around the concourse emptying trash cans. Maddux drove a KU Athletics Corporation pickup truck back and forth to a dumpster north of the building, heaving the plastic bags into the dumpster in the light, cold rain.

A team of six young men prepared to start the gasoline engines of the University’s high-powered Red Max blowers at 7 p.m. Andrew Olive, Lincoln, Neb., sophomore, told the team to start at the top and blow all the newspaper scraps down one row at a time until they made it down the to floor, where the scraps would be swept up.

Sound tedious? Well, it was.

“Saddle up boys,” Olive said, and they started the noisy engines and strapped the blowers to their backs. It was like strapping a lawn mower to your back. Think “Ghost Busters.”

At 10:30 p.m., Jackson called everybody to the southwest corner of the court for the 11 pizzas Maddux had picked up from Papa

John’s. The guys with the blowers, who had made it halfway down the stands, cut their engines.

The group prayed before the meal, then devoured the pizza. Someone brought a fruit bowl found in the concourse.

Someone brought out a basketball, and a few people shot bricks just like Colorado had several hours before.

“Check out our future walk-ons,” laughed Frank Boyd, a nursing student at Johnson County Community College.

Abigail Adams, Lawrence junior, stood in the stands telling the horror story of cleaning up after Late Night in 2003.

“We weren’t as organized as we are now,” she said. “We were all going all over the place. Morale was low; people were dropping out. We were standing there with mops in our hands and were like, ‘No way we’re ever going to get this done.’ We got called back a few times.”

The blowers started their engines and got back to work. As they neared the lower-level seats, people grabbed mops and buckets and started cleaning where the blowers had been.

Just watching the mopping was a mind-numbing experience. It involved moving slowly down the rows, getting every sticky spot and lugging the mop bucket to the restrooms to change the water every couple of rows.

The blowers finally reached the bottom at midnight, and it was time to sweep up the scraps on the floor and mop the concourses.

To make a long, story short, by 3 a.m., most of the group sat in the stands, waiting for the two people still mopping in the student section. Cheek sat as upright as he could in the maintenance room drinking a pop. Everyone concentrated on staying awake.

At 3:30 a.m., the stragglers finished, and Jackson declared that it was time for bed. As the weary workers grabbed their coats from the maintenance room and headed out the door with bags under their eyes, Frank Boyd only had the energy for two words: “Worn out.”

After nearly ten hours of cleaning, Troy Viland wasn’t sure he liked the tradition of students shredding newspaper at games.

“I think it’s crazy after having to clean it up,” he said. “But it’s cool though. You gotta have traditions.”