Barack Obama may be running for president, but his party’s convention is running the Metropolitan State Roadrunners right out of town – at least temporarily. The August 25-29 Democratic National Convention at the Pepsi Center in Denver is causing the Division II school right across the street to close its doors for a week, which is presenting some unique logistical challenges for the school’s athletics program.

The campus will be shut down from Saturday, August 23, to Saturday, August 30 – no classes and no access for faculty, administrators or staff – even the locks will be changed to ensure safety. All of Metro State’s athletics teams will be displaced, too.

To address the unusual circumstances, school officials decided to start the semester on August 11 instead of August 18 to make up for the lost days during the convention. While that appeases some of the academic concerns, the closure has other ramifications on athletics.

Fortunately, the NCAA approved Metro State’s appeal for a waiver to adjust its playing and practice season to accommodate the Democratic invasion of campus. The waiver allows student-athletes to begin practicing August 7 in exchange for a limited practice schedule during the convention week.

Metro State AD Joan McDermott said the appeal was based on a comparison of practice opportunities the school would have had on a regular schedule versus starting  on the 11th and taking the convention week off.  The August 7 start date for preseason practice gives the student-athletes four days before classes begin, which McDermott said is not ideal, but better than the alternative. “We thought having the student-athletes go to their first practice on the first day of school would be stressful, particularly on the freshmen, and also would inhibit building up any kind of physical conditioning,” she said.

Most of the fall-sport coaches will conduct their two-a-days during those first four days, since the waiver requires Metro State teams to treat the convention as a normal period and not a preseason week with extra practices.

The end of the convention week also happens to coincide with the first date of competition for fall sports, so the Roadrunner soccer teams that typically open at home will now be elsewhere – the men in Utah and the women in Minnesota. The women’s volleyball squad will be at a tournament in Hawaii. And when the teams are in Denver that week, they’ll have to practice off campus at the school’s expense, though McDermott said she’s been told to expect at least some reimbursement from the Democratic Party’s local organizing committee.

As for McDermott? She and other athletics department administrators will be working from home, though they’ll be monitoring their teams and making sure that each practice site has the equipment and athletic training personnel required for safe and productive workouts.

The biggest concern for McDermott is the state of her campus facilities – particularly the athletics fields that literally are just across the street from the Pepsi Center. She has heard rumors in fact that Obama will make his grand entrance to Denver via a helicopter that will land right on Metro State’s soccer pitch.

“They’ve also decided to route whatever protesters there are via a walkway between our fields and our gym,” she said. “I’m not worried about the gym, but I am concerned about the fields, though I’m sure they’ll have security there – but it’s a little nerve-wracking when you can’t be there to see for yourself.”

Life for Metro State athletics should return to normal on the 31^st, though McDermott said she’ll just have to wait and see how her facilities fare.

“You take so much for granted about your resources – until you know you’ll be without them,” she said. “Who knows what else we are forgetting about that we normally wouldn’t even think to consider.”