Hey Y'all! It's been a bit since I've written a post on the careers page! My inspiration for this actually came about an interesting way.. trying to up my Instagram game! Since this blog is a place for sports fans AND people wanting to go into the sports industry, I want my Instagram to be the same! Which meant that I went on a following spree and found people working in sport to follow and keep up with on my Instagram as well! Through this process and off of what I've learned from talking to professionals in the industry, I've come up with my top 5 areas of interest in the sport industry. -- And yes I'm aware that my degree doesn't exactly match up perfectly with some of them... but making that life decision at 19 is hard! I actually have struggled with the "What do you want to do?" question when I've been asked. I feel lucky in a sense because most people who stress when asked that question are stressed because they genuinely don't know what they want to do. In my case it's the opposite. There are multiple areas and things that I want to do in the sports industry, so to pinpoint one thing.. well that's hard for me. I know I need to figure it out and I know I need to follow that one path, but when there are multiple things you want to do, and you'd be 110% happy with any of those options, it makes it hard to limit yourself and pick just one. For now, I'm sticking with the sports/sport venue events, but we'll see what the future holds! Below are my top five areas of interest! Maybe you'll find some inspiration on how to answer the "What do you want to do?" question from my list too! 1. Sports/Sport Venue Events I may or may not have put this as #1 because I'm excited for my new job... but even before that I've always been interested in special events at sporting venues! I went on a tour at Busch Stadium about four years ago, where we met with the Director of Special Events and everything she talked about doing from weddings to soccer games to World Series galas caught my attention. - Whether it's working the special events at a venue or the events that take place during games/seasons, I love it all! Since the events are still taking place either during a game or at least at a sporting venue, they still revolve around the game(s) I love but include the event planning aspect as well. -- If you're interested, Google special events for professional sporting teams and do some research on it! 2. Student-Athlete Development Ah, the area I fell in love with completely unexpectedly at Mizzou.. I never once gave this area any thought until the associate athletic director of student-athlete development was my professor for a course. The more I heard, the more I wanted to try it! - This area is still surrounded by sports because you work with the athletes, but it has a lot more service to it than most areas in sports. Within this career path you can assist athletes with career development, community service projects, professional and personal development, and other areas too! Helping athletes decide on life after college and how to make the most of their time as a student-athlete is a side of college athletics that most people don't get the change to see. If the right opportunity presented itself I'd jump back into this in a heartbeat! -- If you're interested, Google student-athlete development at various universities. Or if professional sports are more your interest, try rookie programs in the NFL or NBA. 3. Sport Journalism/Media If y'all read the blog you can quickly figure out that Samantha Ponder is my idol.. and during my Instagram following spree I followed quite a few sports reporters/journalists. Guess what? All of their jobs look like so much fun! I probably should've gotten a degree in communication, journalism, or marketing if I really wanted to pursue this.. but you never know what opportunity can pop up for ya! - Getting to travel the country to various college football games, or follow a baseball team throughout the season sounds like a perfect career! Especially when they get to do serious reporting, but also cover clubhouse jokes or fun stories. 4. Marketing My one college regret? Not getting more experience in sports marketing. I can't say with 100% certainty that I'd love this career path because I haven't done much with it. However, I have friends that have and when you watch marketing directors/employees at collegiate or pro sporting events it looks like something I would really enjoy! Getting to decide on promotions, between inning games, what music plays during games, advertising for games, or new ways to get people to games (check out my post on Mizzou's new tailgate concert series in the article here!) seems like a pretty fun and ever changing job! 5. Team Operations Yet another area that I don't have much experience with, but have talked to people who have.. team operations. So I originally thought this was like a manager for a team, but it can be a lot of different things. The area I'm interested in would be scheduling and travel for teams. Sport teams have travel coordinators that work with airports, pilots, hotels, catering, travel to and from stadiums, etc. which again would be an ever changing job! This position can also include scheduling appearances for interviews, autographs, hospital visits, school visits, or other community service events too. Maybe I'm interested because of my love of traveling.. but I think it sounds fun!
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