Week 2: May 9-12

There are several different duties and responsibilities I will have during my mentorship at Cayuga Community College, I will be attending coaches meetings, creating a master schedule for the next athletic season, creating and receiving contracts from other colleges, eligibility, and budgeting.  Since the college is trying to start both softball and baseball programs, Pete has talked about me creating a budget sheet for the equipment needed to field both teams.  Creating a master schedule is important for all coaches to know when they have gym availability especially with the New York weather.  We do not need practices to cross with each other and one team gets less practice time than another team.  As for creating contracts with opposing teams, this is very beneficial for when I become an Athletic Director of a college.  Without receiving a contract there would be no contest being played.  With the setting up of a contract the college then has to set up officials for each contracted game. 

After working in the Athletic Department for 2 weeks now, I am learning a lot and enjoying everything I am doing.  It is nice to know that Pete is easily approachable and is a great guy to talk to.  He has so much knowledge because he was once in my shoes.  He explained to me that he used to work at Cazenovia College (ironic) I know and he did a lot of the work that the Athletic Director at the time never really wanted to do.  He told me that leaving Cazenovia and coming to Cayuga was one of the best things he could have done for himself.  He has also explained to his goals when he first got here and that was to bring in both softball and baseball programs, and as of right now that goal has not be accomplished. 

This past week I finished working on the academic records.  This was no easy task and was very time consuming, but it’s helpful to know the difference in GPA of students who do not play any sports vs. the students who are involved in sports.  This is a great tool to use when trying to bring in prospective student athletes.  If there is minimal difference in the GPA of students vs. student athletes then it shows that the college supports the athletics programs and works hard to make it a level playing field for all students to participate in sports.  Although I finished up the academic records they are not fully completed yet because grades for the spring 2011 semester are not due until next week.  Once grades are in I can finish up the academic records and send them to my mentor. 

This week I also worked on eligibility for the upcoming seasons in the fall.  I told to look at all the rosters and mark who was eligible and who wasn't.  Students who taking at least 12 credits are considered eligible and those students who have 11 credits or less, I had to look at their overall amount of credits.  For instance if the student was a freshmen and took 15 credits their 1^st semester of their freshmen year, and only took 9 credits their 2^nd semester of their freshmen year, they would still be considered eligible.  Also I had to look at the classes they took because it the student athlete took a 099 class it is not added into their overall GPA.  At Cayuga Community College student athletes must maintain a 2.0 to be eligible to play sports, if they do not maintain a 2.0 during the season it does not affect them.  However if they bring their GPA up after the season and their overall GPA is above a 2.0 they are considered eligible.

Week 1: May 2-5

I began starting my Sports Mentorship on Monday May 2nd.  I am working with the Athletic Director Peter Liddell of Cayuga Community College.  What is great about working with Pete is the fact that he was once in my shoes, and he has explained to me how he got to where he is right now.  For my mentorship I decided to work at a community college located in Auburn New York.  Auburn is a very small town, but has plenty to do, and working at Cayuga Community College will make for a great experience for my future.  I decided around this time last year what I really wanted to do with my life, and that was work with college athletics.  I decided this would be a great fit for me, I enjoyed playing both basketball and softball while I was working towards my undergraduate degree at Cazenovia College where I studied Sports Management.  Cayuga Community College is smack dab in the middle of Auburn, although this is a great location for a college, the college lacks a lot of land to expand.  After talking to my mentor we worked out a time frame to work weekly unless things came up for either one of us.  I will be working Monday-Thursday from 9 am to 3 pm. 

As for working attire, there really are not dress codes and can wear jeans and polo if we want to.  The Athletics Department is really laid back; although my mentor is extremely busy trying to bring in two new sports teams both softball and baseball.  This is a very lengthy task, and extremely time consuming because he has to have meetings with numerous amounts of people.  Also the Athletic Department just recently made a huge decision to get rid of women's lacrosse until enough women show interest in the sport.  This decision was not easy but after I had talked to him about the situation he explained to me: "when you have to drop a program 3 out of 5 years, it just is not fair to the other colleges in the conference".   It made me realize that adding and cutting programs is no easy decision but it may better the college. 

For the past week I have been working on academic records for all the athletic teams from fall 2006 up until now.  This has been quite a task and has been extremely time consuming.  My supervisor wanted to me to get an idea of what he used to do but just has not had the time to continue working on the academic records since 2006.  For each student I looked at their number of credits that semester, GPA that semester, quality points of that semester, as well as the overall credits, overall GPA, and overall quality points.  No names were produced in the academic record files because this this is confidential and should be kept confidential.

There are a few reasons as to why looking at previous academic records is helpful to the athletic department, and one of those reasons is to see what the retention rate of athletes is or even the retention rate of the college.  Although the numbers for returning athletes is shown in the document as low, we looked at the retention of athletes just returning to Cayuga Community College is rather high.  Another reason why we looked at the academic records was to compare the GPA of athletes to the GPA of the rest of the college.  Looking at the retention rate of Cayuga Community College is a great way to attract positional students especially with the number of colleges that are around Cayuga.