The promotion that started out positive for Ball State University women's basketball coach Tracy Roller now has her feeling "horrible."
On the second day of Roller's campaign to sit on a scissor lift to promote the women's basketball team, Director of Intercollegiate Athletics Tom Collins told her to end it.
"I put my heart and soul into this promotion and now it's kind of backfired," Roller said.
Roller was on the lift from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Thursday and Friday. Her goal was to sell 1,000 season tickets, compared to 407 last year, and she was more than three-quarters of the way to reaching it when the promotion ended.
"I think doubling what you had last year is a pretty successful campaign," Roller said. "I just wish we would have had a chance to see if we could have reached that goal."
Roller said she was disappointed by Collins' decision but she wanted to comply with her boss' desires.
Collins said he made the decision Friday to end the promotion.
"I wanted her to concentrate on practice," he said, "I worried about her long-term health with the basketball season going on and I didn't want it to be a distraction for the Homecoming parade or the Homecoming football game."
Roller said it was not her intent to distract from other teams.
"I definitely didn't want to take away attention from soccer or from football or the parade or anything like that," she said. "And I sure didn't want anyone to think that I wasn't giving everything to my team. That definitely was not my intent at all. That there even was a possibility that someone might think that...I sure wouldn't want that."
The promotion allowed Roller to come down from the lift to attend team events such as practices and games.
Roller said Thursday was an off day for the team and the team did not have practice until 9 p.m. Friday so her promotion never interfered with her duties to her team.
She said being away from the office did not affect her ability to work as she had a laptop computer and cell phone with her on the lift.
"The first day I was up there I was really busy with all the visitors and stuff but the second day I really got a lot done," she said.
Roller said she was encouraged by the success of the promotion.
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