Emily -
For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved sports. I love that crisp fall air, the smell of a hotdog or just the excitement of waking up knowing its game day. Growing up in a small town outside of Wichita, Kansas; athletics was just an expectation. The town was so small we only had enough girls to field one softball team, so everyone played softball.
I had the dream of being a WNBA player until about 7th grade. The moment I realized I was not the tallest kid in the class, or the fastest, was when I didn’t make the middle school volleyball team… I was crushed… My whole world fell around my ears. This dream I had been working toward my whole life ended, on a short note telling me I didn’t make the team… but on that same note there was a handwritten letter from the coach saying, “come talk to me.”
Just like that, a new dream started.
My middle school volleyball coach asked me to be the team manager. I had no idea what that meant, but I gave it a shot. So throughout middle school and high school I managed different teams, filling water bottles, running the shot clock and keeping the stat book. Nothing glamorous, but it opened up a new door.
One day during senior year, I was setting up basketball practice and ran into the head coach. This coach, who is still one of my favorite people, graduated from Kansas State University, which was where I was planning on attending that fall (future blog post about my K-State fandom coming soon). I asked him if he knew anyone in K-State’s athletics department, and it turned out that he knew one of the women’s basketball assistant coaches.
Before I knew it, I was in a room with an assistant basketball coach of a school I loved, talking about what I wanted to do with my life. Going into the meeting, my goal was to be a student manager for the team. She asked me what I wanted to do, and at that point I had no idea what sports information was. I described that I wanted to work with athletics and keep stats and she recommended for me to check out sports information.
During my freshman year at K-State, I worked the football game against Texas when K-State won the Big 12 Championship in 2012. It was incredible to be a part of, but I was not there as a student, so when the fans rushed the field postgame, I still had to make my way across the stadium to get quotes from the Texas locker room. That game was really the moment I knew I was doing what I was meant to do, because the game itself was amazing, but I would never again pass up the opportunity to work a game.
And the rest as they say is history. I got a four-year student internship at K-State, living my new dream. I followed that up with a yearlong internship at the Big 12 Conference, then I went back to school as a graduate assistant at Missouri State, before landing at UE as Assistant Director for Media Relations. I was able to have those experiences because of my hard work, but I would have never had the chance without people in my life giving me the opportunity to learn.
That is why I’m so passionate about the Power 5 Mentality idea, because I had to fight and overcome a lot to get to where I am. I know every day I am blessed to be here, because people in my past saw my future before I did, that makes me want to elevate where I am today.
Scott -
I started playing basketball at the age of 5 and instantly fell in love with sports. Regular kids watched cartoons. I watched ESPN. There was just such an infatuation with sports from an early age – I simply could not get enough.
I was fortunate enough to attend virtually every home University of Louisville men’s basketball and football game (an obsession that stays with me today as I write this in my 2005 Final Four t-shirt) from birth until age 21, when I moved out of town. This proved to be the ultimate bonding experience with my old man but also exposed me to the intricacies of fan experience early and often.
Fast forward to high school and I am still playing basketball, although it is clear to me now that I will not be taking my “talents” anywhere to play college ball. One thing I did know, however, is that I would be attending the University of Louisville. This was something I had figured out before I technically realized that it really was a school, not just a sports team.
Lucky for me, UofL offered a high-quality Sport Administration program. While I didn’t know exactly what I was getting in to, this was clearly the major for me. My “Intro to Sport Administration” class taught by the legendary Dr. Mary Hums cleared all of that up for me. It also made me realized how competitive the field was and demanding the jobs were.
I continued on nonetheless and had some great internships early on in my undergraduate career (fan experience – women’s basketball, operations – men’s soccer) but it was my ticket office internship my full senior year that really got my feet wet. This was during the 2012-13 academic year which some (me) call the “Year of the Cardinal” – men’s basketball champs, women’s basketball runner-up, Sugar Bowl victory, College World Series participant. What a time to be an intern in the ticket office…
I was able to turn that internship into a full-time position with IMG Learfield Ticket Solutions at the University of South Florida property after graduation. After 13 months there I left to become the Director of Ticketing Services and Athletic Event Operations at the University of Evansville. I have spent the last 6 years here at UE in various roles (now as Assistant AD for Marketing & Fan Engagement) finding a new obsession – mid-major marketing.
I know there are so many others who share this passion and deserve to have the spotlight shown on their schools and their incredible individual skills – that is why we started Power 5 Mentality.
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