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.