Spring Quarter Reflections

Ethical Leadership in Collegiate Athletics

Ethical Leadership in Collegiate Athletics was a class I felt helped tie the entire content of the program, and pushed me to think critically about issues in collegiate athletics. During this class, we had the opportunity to read Leading Quietly. This book, and the papers and discussion we had gave me different perspective on what leadership is. Leadership is not always being the loud person, but can be done Quietly as the name of the book suggests. This idea of leading quietly is something I will cherish and bring with me in my career in collegiate athletics. Further, during our extended weekend we had valuable discussions as a class. The best discussion we had focused on the idea of beauty in sport. Our classmates came up with many different examples of beauty in sport. Examples included the Central Washington Softball players who carried their hurt opponent around the bases, or a pre game ritual cheer by athletes. Also, pure emotions, both of victory and defeat were also sources of beauty for my classmates. The opportunity to sit with my peers and peruse youtube in search of beauty in sport was something that brought great perspective to my life regarding sport, and the use of sport in our society. This thought ties into the final assignment we did for the class. Each person was assigned to watch a sport related movie and discuss the deeper meaning for our society. I choose to watch the movie Bull Durham, one I had not yet seen. This movie talked of the importance of working together with individuals, and finding a way to succeed. Its about two teammates who did not like each other, but found a way to work together which lead to their success. Sport movies in our society send huge messages regarding our lives, which leads to the realization that sport has a huge impact on our society. Sport can lift the spirits or break the hearts of a nation. This class gave me great perspective into the importance of athletics in our society.

Internship experience:

Spring quarter has been a great culmination of my classwork and internship experiences thus far. This spring I have been in a whirlwind with softball, as we have traveled extensively and competed successfully on the field. The skills of leadership I have learned in the program have been able to be put to work in my internship experience. I have had the opportunity to take charge of team travel, and work with many different kinds of people in different cities. I have also had the chance to dramatically increase my coaching skills with the help of the husky coaching staff. Next year, I feel as if I will be able to move into a softball program and make a positive impact because of the opportunities and experiences I have had this year. My internship has been an awesome, busy, exciting and rewarding experience and I cannot wait to see the success of our team in the postseason the next couple of weeks, and last few weeks of my internship experience.

Final program reflections:

The Intercollegiate Athletic Leadership program I am close to completing has been the best educational experience I have had thus far. I have had the opportunity to grow as a student, a coach, and a person. This program has given me both the tools and perspective to lead effectively. I am better able to relate to my peers, and coworkers, I have grown extensively in my coaching skills and I have a greater knowledge of both athletics and higher education. I am excited to both have my masters degree in my hand, and to test my knowledge and experiences in the "real world". Exiting this program is a bittersweet thing, and I am so thankful for the opportunities I have had.

Winter quarter reflection

Quarterly blog reflection-

Information management and technology in sports- Professor Mike Eisenberg’s class was not like any class I have taken before. To begin with, I have never had a class based on facebook participation. Most classes I have been apart of have greatly discouraged the use of facebook during class. The use of facebook greatly enhanced student participation opportunities in class and gave participants great perspective from others. The content of the class was also something that was very new to me. I have not taken any technology classes before and was able to learn a great deal of new information. The most interesting part of the class was being able to see the technological advances in sport that have taken place, and to think about the technological advances in sport that our yet to come. The Nintendo wii and Xbox kinect just seem like fun games to many, but I know realize the implications for advancement in the future of sport. Will technology ever replace aspects of athletics? Will we (as a society) use technology in every form of exercise/competition? These are the questions that I have asked myself throughout our isport course.

Additionally, the final assignment for isport’s gave me the opportunity to work with my classmates to promote a newly developed system that can be used in intercollegiate athletics. My group decided to work on a vital monitoring workout system, which will increase both offseason conditioning results and increase health safety in the weight/cardio room. This assignment helped me to put my knowledge from the semester into a real live situation.

Leadership and decision making with data- This class helped me to grow as a professional in the athletics world. Before this class, I did not have much experience working with data and compiling statistics and graphs. On top of that, I felt like the final project was a great way for me to showcase what I could do with information. The final project gave me a way to convince myself that I could create a report based on data collected. The process of completing the report was the biggest thing I will take away from this class. Creating reports using data is something that I will use throughout my career in intercollegiate athletics. It is something that will help me succeed in the field, and something that gives me a great deal of confidence.

Internship- This quarter has brought an increased workload to my internship, but has made me love what I am doing even more. This fall we spent the months preparing for our upcoming season. The time is finally here and we are off to a running start. Currently we are in our last pre-season weekend before pac-10 play starts and only have one loss on the year. In December I found out I was not only traveling with the team but would act in the role of sport operations while on the road. I have been in charge of coordinating team travel, team food and other travel events. During the road games I am in charge of video taping the games for later review, and at home help keep statistics on pitchers. I am learning so much and look forward to every day at “work”. This internship experience will absolutely help me in my future career in intercollegiate athletics. The experiences I have had so far, and the contacts I have met will greatly benefit me in the years to come.

Winter quarter areas of expertise- I am developing the skills to better understand and use data in the intercollegiate athletics field. In the field of coaching (which I am pursuing) data is much more than batting average or win/loss percentage. Data can be used on the field in a cauldron type system (ie. UW volleyball) or in the ticketing department looking at your season ticket holder population. My challenge for the athletics industry would be to continually seek new data to improve their systems/programs. The only way to be great is to continually look to get better, and additional data can help us achieve this.