Experience Matters - Grand Valley State University

Internship at Allendale Public Schools

Brayden
Major: Sport Management I spent my time either working events or in the school. For events, I would set up before events, take down after, and make sure things were running smoothly during the event. Some things were specific to the sport. During boys soccer and basketball I would often be in charge of the clock and scoreboard. For football games I would work as the spotter, meaning I would watch who the ball carrier was and who made the tackle then give the numbers to the announcer. Most of my event work was focused on how to run an event and learn all the little details that make for a successful event. In the school, I did a wide range of tasks. Somedays it was organizing contracts. Other days I was hanging up or taking down posters in the gym. There were times where I just sat back and learned how do do things like scheduling games or would listen to my supervisor talk to coaches.

My Game Ops Experience

Robert
Major: Sport Management The tasks/projects I have completed are different in each sport. In all sports we set up and prepare the event beforehand. Iýve managed traffic for parking during the events and helped with post game tear down. Iýve also been a ball boy for soccer games. While not working games, I am in our departmentýs office completing other tasks such as doing inventory, making sure the golf carts are filled with gas, and helping with delivered packages.

GVSU Club Sports Promotions Intern

Taylor
Major: Sport Management While in this position I am in charge of all of the official GVSU Club Sports social media pages. I had to attend many events to gather content to create posts for socials. I also had to design the club sports website and keep up to date with all 40-plus clubs. I am in charge of the email and communicate daily with hundreds of students and peers.

Kennedy's Sport management Internship

Kennedy
Major: Sport Management Throughout my internship, I completed many tasks. On the daily, I would book hotel rooms for entire teams, and families. I would call hotels and create room blocks for numerous teams, which took a lot of patience and time. I also sent out mass emails weekly to the soccer club families informing them of weekly updates. I also took on my own team as a coach, and got to learn the sport management side of coaching. I answered phone calls, helped with event coordination etc. Each day there is a different task assigned.

Assistant Clubhouse Attendant

Tanner
Major: Sport Management I managed and took care of the visiting baseball teams when they would come in for a six game homestand as well as assisted with anything the home team needed. A usual day for me would be arriving around 11:30am. I would get the clean laundry out of the bins in my clubhouse and hang the players jersey and pants on a rack for them to grab when they walked in. I hung the coaches clothes in their lockers and made sure their shoes were cleaned. I would get coffee started and restock the water cooler with bottled water. I would finish drying towels for both clubhouses and get those folded throughout the day. I would then make sure all 6 water coolers in the dugouts were filled with ice and cold water for the game and that they had cups with them. Most teams would start to arrive by 1:30-2:00pm and I would assist with setting up their lunches when it arrived then clean it up before game time. I was in charge of keeping my clubhouse clean and organized by taking out the trash and making sure it was presentable. During the game I would wash and fold towels again so they were ready postgame. After the game was done I would have already setup their postgame meal when it was delivered during the game but would wait for all players to leave and head back to the hotel so I could begin cleaning up the postgame food, taking out the trash, organizing the clubhouse and getting all dirty laundry to the main clubhouse attendant to get started washed for the next day.

Windy City Thunderbolts Intern

Taylor
Major: Sport Management As a promotions intern, I assisted with the set up and execution of all on-field promotions, including selecting the contestants to participant in them. I also updated the game script for the announcer before every game.

NCMC Athletics

Brooke
Major: Sport Management As the intern of a brand new college athletic program, I had many responsibilities. I assisted the athletic director in scheduling, booking hotels and transportation for away sporting events, creating student athlete portfolios, and running new student orientations. I also ordered new equipment and assembled it for the athletic program.

Asst Camp Director with GVSU Basketball

Martin
Major: Sport Management It depended on the camp but I ran score clocks for games and kept track of stats, taught drills, coached, refereed games, helped register teams, ordered food, and worked admissions.

It's Your Summer

Shane
Major: Sport Management At the Whitecaps, I would help set up batting practice by placing screens and skirts to protect the field and players. Then I would smooth out the warning track before the game to make it a level playing field and I would also put in the bases for the game. There are 7-8 of us and we all had our specific job to make sure the game started on time. After the game, my job was to fix and prepare the mound for the game for the following day.

MSA Woodland Intern

Daniel
Major: Sport Management My main responsibilities for my internship included: maintaining facility maintenance of the Woodland Facility, scheduling facility rentals for clients, creating monthly schedules for the facility, checking in members for drop-in play, concessions work during tournaments/events, event set-up/tear down for tournament play, creating a practice plan for youth basketball coaches, office admin work and any other day-to-day tasks that were needed.

Kids adventures

tori
Major: Sport Management I have taught kids all different games and swimming lessons in the pool and out of the pool. We even got to use the golf simulator and I was able to teach the kids how to swing a gold club. There also were days where I taught arts and crafts.

MBA Coaching Experience

Brooke
Major: Sport Management I coached the 6th grade blue team, pictured above, for about 4 months. I then moved to coaching the 6th UA future team and a 9th/10th regional team which I will be with throughout the summer. Coaching consist of running multiple practices a week and traveling for tournaments on the weekend. I also gained a lot of experience in being a site manager at our location when we would host tournaments.

EGR Intern Experience

Nathan
Major: Sport Management Throughout my time working at East I have had the opportunity to work at basketball games, soccer games, and lacrosse games where I have been involved in the event set up, take down, and supervision. Day-to-day responsibilities include working on social media graphics, assisting the athletic director with facility maintenance, and learning the daily operations involved in running an athletic department.

Assistant Middle School Athletic Coordinator

Scott
Major: Sport Management The main project this semester has been a proposal for an overhaul of the entire athletic system in GRPS Middle School Athletics. We are attempting to have our middle schools join a conference and introduce a more competitive format to help prepare our students for high school athletics. Aside from this task I have done scheduling for several sports as well as assisted in a walk through at Van Andel arena and surrounding area for this fall's turkey trot. Additionally, I have done game operations, setting up and breaking down events, as well as officiating.

Internship Experince

ryan
Major: Sport Management While at my internship, I spent a lot of time recruiting players for future years. I also spent time working on a volleyball camp/event that will occur in the summer for high school volleyball players to attend. Lastly, I spent time helping out with day to day tasks like organizing practices, tournaments, etc.

Whitecaps Intern

Megan
Major: Sport Management As Reading Club Intern, it was my job to plan this season's Reading Club program. My main task was connecting with local schools to enroll them in our Reading Club program, where students who read a certain amount of time in the month of March are eligible to receive two free Whitecaps tickets. I handle individual Reading Club ticket redemption, and I also work with many schools to organize large group outings for schools who wished to use their Reading Club tickets in this manner. As this position falls into the Ticket Sales department, I am also involved in advance individual and group ticket sales, as well as working in the box office on game days to facilitate walk-up ticket sales.

Intern at Woodland

Jonathan
Major: Sport Management During the internship I was tasked with set up and tear down of daily sports events, phone calls for the different leagues we hosted, creating schedules and being apart of the brainstorming process for new ideas for potential growth during SWOT analysis development. As well as taking inventory for the building and other day to day tasks that arose.

GVSU Sports Marketing and Fan Development

Joanna
Major: Sport Management As a member of this crew, one of my main tasks was controlling the music on game days at Volleyball, Football, Soccer, and Men's and Women's Basketball. I was also responsible for setting up Softball's music for the year. Other tasks involved going to local businesses and handing out schedule cards to showcase what is happening on campus. As a part of the marketing team, we were in charge of carrying out in-game promotions, setting up sponsorship tables, and game-day activities for fans.

Compliance Intern

Gabe
Major: Sport Management I was able to validate prospective student-athlete scholarship tenders and assist with student-athlete eligibility checks. Projects I assisted with were the Indoor Track Conference Championship, updating Championship Manuals, and planning media days.

Ticket Operations

Nick
Major: Sport Management Provide customer service for complaints, sales, or unique situations, sell single game tickets, assist in game operations, and setup suites/premium seats before the game.

Muskegon Lumberjacks

Keigan
Major: Sport Management I tagged along with the head equipment manager and helped up set up the room for practices and gamedays, helped repair player's equipment, took inventory of apparel and equipment, and helped with doing the laundry of the athletes and coaches.

GVSU Marketing and Fan Development

Brian
Major: Sport Management For just about every sport, as an intern staff, we did very similar tasks including stadium music, game operations, video and scoreboard operations, camera operations, and much more. Football season was pretty wild and hectic, but it was fun the whole time. Most games started at 7 pm, but we interns and other staff had to be there at noon to set everything up for tailgating, tickets, t-shirt giveaways, and communicate with sponsors. Most games had over 10,000 in attendance, and a big factor in that is student attendance as our student tickets are free. During the game, we have to run different promotions at different times of the game that are clearly outlined in the script we get hours before. These promotions include operating the t-shirt cannon and shooting it into the crowd, finding students to do games on the field during media timeouts, playing certain music, and whatever else we needed to do to make the event more than just a football game. This year we broke our attendance record for a home football game with over 17,000 at our football stadium to watch us play our West Michigan Rival Ferris State, who was ranked #1 at the time and we were #5

Game Operations

Maggie
Major: Sport Management In the Grand Valley athletic department I worked on various tasks. My day looked different every time I was interning. Some days I would work at one of the sporting events. I often set up and tore down for the basketball games. I also did track and field set up and tear down. That involved moving all of the equipment in the right place and making sure everything was ready for the meet. For the basketball games I would do various tasks. Some days I would make sure the refs got to the game on time, or sometimes I would walk the team to the locker room. Every week I would go into the office to take care of various tasks. I would be in charge of doing facility checks and putting in maintenance orders if anything needed to be fixed. I made sure that all of the packages in the field house got delivered to the right owner. I would take photos at different games and manuals that student workers use for various sporting events. Those manuals were the reference point that the workers would use.

SportsQuest Intern

Nathan
Major: Sport Management I have helped hold numerous baseball/softball tournaments and showcases. Provided insight for Sports Quest members on activities unique to the complex. Helped clean and manage the facility on a daily basis. Have provided pitching knowledge to various athletes through lessons and practices.

Athletic Director Intern

Lucas
Major: Sport Management At Lakeshore I learned how to run a successful High School athletic event. I was given many tasks that varied from day to day. I got the opportunity to work in the office to learn the daily roles and tasks that an Athletic Director would encounter. Each day I was presented with a new assignment that would help me learn the different roles you would be doing or giving as an Athletic Director.