Today was our Kick Ball game of Full-Time versus The Interns. It was so much fun and everyone had such a great time with it! We all have a healthy amount of competitiveness in us, which works since we are all in the sports biz. But, the Interns ended up winning, which we are very proud of and can't wait to gloat about if we see them again! We all went out to eat afterwards and say our goodbyes. It was bittersweet because we all, especially us interns, became such a tight nit group especially since we lived together and in the same building with the guys being in one apartment and the girls in another. We also had our exit interviews where I listed the things I felt the program could use such as more teaching and shadowing of the full-time staff so that throughout the season the interns gradually take over more and more tournaments and we act as the full-time staff members during tournaments. But, it was overall a wonderful experience and I am honored and grateful to have had the opportunity to be part of it!
0 Comments
I wasn’t present much for this weekend as Football had check-ins and I was required to be there to help out and everything. So, today was my last working day with Sports Force and the last tournament I would be working for them. It ran pretty smooth for the most part, it was a smaller tournament than we have been having as we have reached our peak for the summer so the tournaments get smaller and smaller around this point. It was a good last day, nothing major happened with the tournament which is always nice. I basically helped out wherever, I was a field marshal, looked over Tournament Central for a little while, was out in the park just wandering and checking on the field marshals and amenities people to make sure everything was okay and they didn’t need anything. I helped break people and just had a chill relaxing day. Tomorrow the interns are coming back and we are playing a kickball game against the full-time staff and then we are all going out for last day lunch with everyone which should be a fun time!
It was a short day today since our Golden Spikes tournament wasn't that big and was scheduled to end pretty early. Then we just had the Whiffle Ball tournament and they stayed a little longer to finish up the game but no one really minded. I once again just roamed around the park and helped where I was needed. We began a little more tournament prep again, and I did as much as I could because I wasn't going to be at the park much sine Football was beginning back at Tiffin. It was still a fun weekend though with a cool tournament of a sport we weren't really expecting to host or for it to be such a sport that had such a large following and everything. It was pretty cool.
This weekend we are also hosting a Whiffle Ball tournament. The interns and full-time staff have actually been really hyped about this tournament all week long. The interns formed a team and enter the competition. These guys are legit though and "professional" Whiffle Ball is so much more extreme and harder than you would think. I was really the only one that really worked and did stuff throughout the day but I didn't mind. Everyone had a lot of laughs and good times today!
Check out the video of the tournament at SFP: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAMIXqJJvvw Today began our Golden Spikes tournament. It seems like these tournaments keep blurring together and its the same thing every weekend. The coaches checked in yesterday, and we had a few check in today. I just roamed around the park, at this point the full-time staff just expects us to find something to do and places ourselves throughout the park. We each kind of gravitate towards the places we were first put and the positions we usually spend the most time in. I usually hang around Custom Threads, Jen, Seth, and Connor wander around and talk to the field marshals, and Seth usually stays by the front gates. Gabby is the same as me and usually gravitates towards Custom Threads because thats what we are most used to working and being around. It was a smooth start, again nothing major to report a pretty normal day at the Park.
We gained a new member to the team, so to speak. I font remember when he moved into the park but his name is Jake and he's with Cedar Point within their marketing and ticket department. We have a kiosk set up that offers discount tickets for families of the players who receive a 5 day pass to cedar point as part of the participation fee. Well, we've always gotten people coming back to us after purchasing tickets and yelling at us when theres an issue and we always to explain that we are not in any way part of the Cedar corporation. We are our own separate entity and just partner with Cedar Point because they own the land Fields built the park on and we rent it out, even though Sports Force owns the actual facility, not the land. So I guess it was worked out that we would have a full-time Cedar Point employee on hand to handle all matters of tickets purchased by friends and families of the players who wished to visit the park. That was a new addition.
During our staff meeting we discussed how we had been trying out the new policy of athletes only being allowed to bring in a reusable sports bottle to help keep them hydrated and we also set up water horses that people could fill up the bottles in free of charge. We had too many complaints about the food stand snot being open long enough for the late games and kids would be starving after playing all day with no way to get food since they weren't allowed to bring any in and that water wasn't allowed in so that was a health concern, etc. and so we created this new policy in agreement with Cedar Point we had put into effect either the previous weekend or the weekend before and it seemed to be working! We weren't receiving as many complaints and we also were able to get the concession stands open a little longer until at least the final games of the night began. 21 July: Today began our Round Tripper Tournament which is our Baseball/Softball tournament. Most of the fields are being used for Baseball but we also have a softball tournament going on. It was kind of cool to have the two sports playing simultaneously since we usually use have one sport in the park and no real co-ed tournaments except for the soccer tournaments, which we haven't had a lot of. Many of our tournaments recently and in the future are getting smaller and smaller since our summer season is beginning to come to a close and in a month or so kids will be back in school and travel teams will have ended their season. I was in tournament central today and really didn't do much. All of the employees and staff have done so many tournaments now it feels like everyone knows what to do and how to handle certain situations. So I mostly hung out and helped answer questions people and when they came in.
23: I basically did the same exact thing today as I did yesterday. Theres nothing really new to write about. We began our Gold Glove Weeklong tournament play today. I was scheduled to be in the ticket shack so that people could have the option of playing put-putt only since none of the interns were certified to work the other amenities and the full-time staff didn't want to schedule the part time staff who were certified because the tournament is such a small one and there are not that many people in the park. It was pretty boring, I honed in my juggling skills with golf balls and baseballs and received a couple of compliments. The other interns were scheduled in various other places and then also to help the full-time staff in tournament central to tournament prep and just help monitor that area so the full-time staff were free to do their own jobs and not worry so much about the tournament because we had it handled. Especially since this wasn't out first weeklong tournament we've run and we pretty much had it down on what needed to be done and how it should be running. I was in the ticket shack for most of the day and then got switched out with another intern to go help in tournament central and walk around the park to check on the fields and the marshals. It was a pretty smooth day.
Today started our skills competition and opening ceremony to kick off our Golden Glove Weeklong tournament. This is our biggest weeklong with 30 teams reporting. Everyone checked in. We spent weeks preparing for this making sure the schedule for today flowed right and we were as prepared as we could be. Our opening ceremonies went smoothly, it started to get cloudy so we were praying that the rain held off during the skills competition. That wasn’t the case. About half way through the competition it started ot pour down rain. I was on the field with Gabby with the 12-year-old division. Both her and I got soaking wet within 5 minutes because we had to clean up the field quickly so the balls weren’t getting soaked and everything. We went back and forth between the two dugouts to make sure everyone was on the same page. Originally we were just going to delay the games and hope that eventually the rain would at least slow down enough that visibility wasn’t an issue and it was safe on the field to play. Even though we didn’t have to worry about mud because the fields were turf, it was still pretty slippery out there and the rain was pounding. Our teams wanted to continue the competition they were true champs and since it wasn’t thundering or lightening, we could still technically play. I ran to the other field with the old groups and talked o the interns to see what they were wanting to do. The older guys just wanted to suspend the games for the day and resume them at a different day in the week. I was soaking wet running from field to field and just keeping in contact with everyone, at the dismay of my field, we decided to suspend the games since it looked like we were about to get hit by another bad storm right after this one cleared a little bit and it was already getting late and these guys all had the tournament starting tomorrow so we didn’t want them getting sick or worn out and just decided it would be best if they just all went back to their hotels and just rest up until tomorrow. Overall it was still a good day, all the teams were very cooperative and the coaches all understood which was very nice as we didn’t have to deal with that headache at least of having to explain over and over again why we were suspending the games and resuming them at a later date. So as the staff, we got off work a lot earlier than expected which was a nice break since we had a long week ahead of us and all of us interns had worked a long weekend with working the tournament and then getting all of the weeklong stuff finished and prepared for.
This was a very interesting weekend for us. The Flag Football people were on a championship world tour and they were basically just renting fields from us. They had their won set-up for everything including refs, operations, they had pretty much everything we just provided water, the bleachers, and the fields pretty much. It was a very relaxing weekend. We had some baseball games going on, about 30 teams, which is an extremely small tournament compared to the normal sized tournaments we have of 80-100 teams in attendance. I wasn’t assigned a specific job so I kind of just wandered around the complex and checked in on people, I gave people their breaks and covered their position for them while they ate lunch or just chilled in the workers lounge since it was hot outside and the break room was air conditioned. It was a very relaxed weekend as we were really only running the baseball tournament but even then it was a Nations Tournament which means they were basically renting the fields and we were staffing the scoreboards for them but, it was a Nations tournament and their Supervisor, Harry, was basically in charge and handled the operations of the tournament and us interns and full-time staff members just kind of sat back and where there when needed for questions, concerns, and supervision of the part-time staff we were providing. Tomorrow begins our Golden Glove Weeklong tournament which we have been working on all week. It is our biggest weeklong tournament with about 30 teams coming out for the tournament as far as New York. We will be doing the opening ceremonies again and the skills completion but will be splitting the teams up into their different age groups so the competition is more fair. I will be with the 12u teams and we are praying the weather holds off because it looks like it’s going to storm right during our skills competition around 6 so fingers crossed.
|
Madison W.Undergraduate Student at Tiffin University pursing a Bachelors of Business Administration in the field of Sports and Recreation Management. |