Rodney Anderson Leads Six-Hour Sanford Center Conversion from Hockey to Basketball

Rodney Anderson, conversion manager at the Sanford Center in Bemidji, marshaled staff from camera operators to concession workers to flip the arena from ice to hardwood in six hours to host the 218 Sports Showcase. The showcase featured Bemidji State, Bemidji High School and other area hoops teams and ran Thursday to Saturday; organizers completed the turnaround in half the time of a recent conversion for the Harlem Globetrotters.

The work began Tuesday, Feb. 10, immediately after both Bemidji State men's and women's hockey practices ended. The ice crew started by shaving the edges along the boards and cooling the slab under the ice in a one-hour prep to make the surface ready for decks; Anderson explained the colder temp is necessary because the arena will be significantly warmer during basketball events and the ice must be protected for use again afterward.

Next came the under-ice decking. "Our ice decking, it's right around 550 pieces," Anderson said. "I generally do the math on how many people that we have and how many pieces there are to move. That's that many less pieces per person." Laying those roughly 550 pieces took about an hour, according to the conversion timeline. Anderson's crew distributed decking work across available staff to speed the process.

With the decks in place, crews moved on to removing the hockey glass and installing the portable basketball surface. Workers then installed hoops, positioned scorer and media tables, and ran necessary power and wiring to support the scoreboard and media equipment. The coordinated sequence - ice prep, decking, glass removal, court installation and technical hookups - allowed the Sanford Center to finish the full conversion in six hours for the 218 Showcase.

By midnight on the conversion day, crews had completed about 90 percent of the work, reflecting the pace and cross-department effort required. The six-hour turnaround represents a notable improvement from last month when organizers required roughly 12 hours to convert the arena for the Harlem Globetrotters, a conversion that had not been done in at least three years before that visit.

Sanford Center remains primarily built and used for Bemidji State University hockey, so these basketball conversions are intensive, coordinated operations that rely on staff from multiple departments. Anderson’s hands-on calculations about decking distribution and the step-by-step maintenance of the ice underline the practical logistics behind hosting non-hockey events in Bemidji’s main arena.