Week 10 Aug 15-17

Although this is my last post, this is not my last week with the College.  My mentor asked me if I would like to stay at the college working part-time.  Of course I accepted the offer because I have enjoyed what I did over the summer and I want to keep gaining experience.  I have worked very hard with the new athletics website and I will continue to work hard.  I am excited to continue working for Cayuga Community College Athletics. 

This past week I worked on completing the website so it was ready to be put online.  I was asked to add some more articles about new coaches, the new improvements of the athletics website.  I also added some additional articles about acceptional athletes and MSAC players.  These articles will be featured on the main athletics page as well as there respective sports pages. 

The fall season has official started, both the men's and women's soccer teams are hard at work as well as the women's volleyball team.  The problem with the fall sports is that teams only have 2 weeks to prepare their teams for the first game of the season.  They have to get 2 scrimmages in and figure out their starters in 2 weeks.  This is not easy for any of the coaches because both the men's and women's soccer coaches are new and the volleyball coach is only in her second year.  With the athletic season underway I hope that Cayuga leaves their mark out on the field and volleyball court.  GO SPARTANS!

Week 9 Aug 8-11

I have had a lot of catching up to do because the coaches have been very hard at work trying to get the website up and running, we would have like to of had it up by Friday the 12th, but it just was not working out for us and hopefully we will have it up by Friday the 19th, which is still great timing because it means the website will be up and running before the start of the academic year. 

This week my mentor asked the other coaches and myself to get in contact with potential sponsors for the new website.  These potential sponsors would have two different options for sponsorship, a premium sponsorship package and a supporting sponorship package.  These sponsorships would be seen on the new athletics website for Cayuga Community College.  We tried to get the community involved by asking for sponorships around Cayuga, such as pizza shops and they would be considered "The Official Pizza Place of the Cayuga Spartans". 

Another thing we had to do last week was put down the volleyball court because it was taken down in February so no one could ruin it when the lacrosse team had practice in the gym.  This task took about 2 hours with 12 people putting it toghether.  It is now ready to play on and the volleyball team will be hard at work for the next 2.5 months.  Also both soccer teams are getting ready for the start of their season by figuring out jerseys and the number of players that will be coming in.  Within the next week or so teams will be finalized and I will be putting together a spread sheet for each coach with players information such as Name, Phone Number, and E-MAIL address.    

As my mentorship has been drawing to a close I have realized more and more what I want to do.  I see how much work my mentor does even in the summer when he comes in a 7:00 in the morning and leaves at 5:30 at night day in and day out.  I know that I want to be someone that the athletics department depends on and I plan to continue to follow my goals and keep my head high gaining more and more experience day in and day out.  I realize more than ever that I want to be in the college athletic department setting some day, whether that is being an assistant or associate athletic director, or a full fledge athletic director. 

Week 8 July 18-20

Things were very busy around the office, while trying to get the website set up.  This has been no easy task because we are all working on the website together and are always having to contact the guy in charge of the website.  We have been working very hard to make sure this website looks sharp and is ready to go by the start of the fall sports.

Contracts have been done and all the schedules are set and ready to for the start of the entire athletic year.  The only things that need adjusting are the scrimmages for winter and spring because those coaches have not been in to figure out their scrimmages.  Personally I think its great that the Athletic Director gets all of his contracts done at once because it is a bit slower in the summer time and he actually has time to do the contracts where as when it comes to for the acadmeic year to start it is a lot harder because people are so busy. 

If there is one thing I would want to change to improve the athletics department at Cayuga Community College would be the addition of both a Sports Information Director, and a full time Athletics Trainer.  The problem with not having a full fledge SID is that the stats are not always up to date, nor are the news articles up on the website as quickly.  When it comes to a full time athletics trainer this may be harder due to the fact this is a community college.  Right now its hard for the part time athletic trainer to work around the sports schedules since the academic year has not started.  All the sports teams are practicing early in the morning and in the afternoon, unfortunately the trainer is only here from 3-5 making it hard for soccer players and volleyball players to get the proper taping done.   

Week 7: July 5-7

This week I have been continuously working with the coaches and the new website to get it up and running before the start of the athletic season.  This is no easy task because when going through Presto Sports it makes for a very long process.  This is a very interesting assignment as I will be working with the website a lot in the upcoming months for all of the sports.  I will be working a lot with the basketball coach because he is not very good with computers and it takes him longer to learn the tasks. 

I have also continued to work with the contracts we will be sending out to opposing schools very shortly.  This is a great way to gain some hands on experience and knowledge when it comes to applying for Athletic Director positions.  There have been other small assignments I have worked on that will help me when it comes to gaining experience.  I have already done some budgeting for the new teams the college is trying to bring in.  I never realized how expensive it was to field a team even if there is not a lot of equipment. 

Hopefully next week we will be focusing a lot more on contracts because that is very beneficial to me and the way contracts are sent out and who is suppose to sign them is something I need to learn.  Also I have learned to keep everything on file for a year because the contracts state who is responsible for getting officials and what officials are being used for those games.  Before this internship I never knew how important contracts really were.  I look forward to digging a bit deeper and getting myself familiar with contracts not only the ones Cayuga sends out but the ones they receive as well.   

Week 6: June 27-30

This week I continued to work on the summer girls and boys league rosters.  This is very time consuming because players are constantly being added.  On Monday alone I made up a significant amount of rosters for 10 teams both for girls and boys.  On Wednesday I had to add to each team, and make up new rosters for another 3 teams.  Although it is a lot of work to keep up with the summer league basketball league, I think it’s great bringing in 12 to 13 teams both at the varsity and junior varsity levels. 

I was also lucky enough to start the process of contracts.  This is one of the main experiences I want to work with a little more because it is so important.  As of right now we are just receiving contracts and hopefully next week we will be sending out contracts to different schools.  All contracts sent out and received are put on file and kept for a year.  Since we are a community college the contracts are pretty easy because all the schedules are pretty similar.  When I mean similar, I am saying that if Cayuga Community College has a home game against Finger Lakes Community College in 2010, in 2011 Cayuga would have to travel to Finger Lakes.  This tends to make it easier to schedule seasons in advance. 

Week 5: June 20-23

A lot has been going on in the Cayuga Community College Athletics Department, with the new contract between Presto Sports and Cayuga Community College big changes will be made.  As a department we are launching a new athletics website.  This is set up by the AD, 4 other coaches and me.  As the intern I am responsible for all of the coaches getting their teams all straightened out and the other team they were assigned.  It is my responsibility to make sure everything is spelled correctly in articles, all the dates and times for scheduled contests are correct.  I am considered the first line of defense when it comes to spelling and everything being correct.  Just like any new program we have been facing some issues but have since been resolved.  This is not easy for any of us because it really is all about figuring things; we have not had someone come in to help us.

Some of the problems we have faced are the athletic/academic year.  We are a department are starting backwards from last year’s records including press releases, game rosters, pictures, and bios.  This is a nice concept because last year hardly any of the coaches wrote up game recaps simply because some of the games were not worth writing up.  Once this website is up and running it will be a huge attribute to the Athletics Department.  This could be a successful recruiting tool and when potential athletes are looking at Cayuga Community College they can read about their coach, and look up the previous year of how their team did. 

I have also been putting together the college’s annual high school summer league paperwork.  This is something that has a constant upkeep because players are always signing up or teams are consistently coming in.  This is another great way to get the Cayuga community involved by offering the college’s gym to those local high schools.  This also shows the community that the college wants to be involved.  I will soon be working on contracts between the schools this coming season.  Instead of sending contracts out before the beginning of each season, my mentor sends out all of the contracts to each school for each sport at once.  This method seems to be better because the contracts get done all at once. 

Week 4: June 6-9

This past week I have been continually working with the coaches to get the new athletics website for Cayuga Community College.  Some of the coaches are having an extremely hard time due to the lack of organization coaches from other teams.  I have been working with both the men’s and women’s soccer coach, the volleyball coach, and the men’s basketball coach.  I have noticed some coaches are having a harder time than others trying to come up with statistics and articles write ups.  This is not only Cayuga’s fault but the other colleges fault as well.  It has come to my attention that at the junior college level statistics and articles are not a top priority unlike other colleges. 

I also worked with my mentor the past few days trying to update the Mid-State Atlantic Conference Handbook.  The last time this was fully updated was the academic year of 2008-2009 so as you can see they are a bit behind with updating.  The most important part of updating this was the Conference Championships.  These items had not been updated since the academic year 2007-2008, so it was hard for me to look up the information because unlike other conferences there is no conference website.  I found that since Cayuga Community College does not have both baseball and softball, and just recently added volleyball it was harder to find that information because my supervisor was never given the emails stating what team was considered conference champions, who was player of the year, or who was coach of the year for those sports.  Even though he kept everything on file, he was never given the other information because those certain sports are not played here.

Now for the exciting news from the week, there is an excellent chance by the academic year 2012-2013 we will be seeing some drastic changes throughout the campus of Cayuga Community College, especially with the athletic department.  Athletics plans on adding brand new bleachers up in the gym for fans of both volleyball, and basketball games. 


Hopefully in the next week or two I will be working on contracts for other teams.  That really gets down to the nitty gritty of what being an athletic director is all about.  Other than budgeting which I have already worked on because my supervisor wanted a general idea of how much it would cost to start a team.  I realized that although the sport in general may be cheap to run, starting off any sport from scratch is no way shape or form cheap.   I also see how many different types of meetings my supervisor has on a day to day basis and he is always on the go.