My Freshman Experience
Everyone says that freshman year is a time to enjoy and discover yourself, and based on my own experience this could not be more true. Coming into college, I really was not sure what I wanted to study or pursue as a career. Many of my uncles and extended family members studied engineering, both my parents are teachers, and my grandfathers were both successful businessmen, and yet none of these careers particularly interested me. I wanted to find my passion, and none of these careers seemed be it. It was not until I made a spur-of-the-moment decision during freshman orientation to declare my major in Sports Administration that I found that I want to pursue a career in sports. Although I have now switched majors to Business Analytics (to work on the analytical side of sports), this decision kick-started my journey in my year of discovery and introspection.
When I started taking Sports Administration classes, I had dreams of utilizing the skills I learned from them to land a job in a professional team's front office or a college's athletic department, and so I made sure to take advantage of my connections within UC's Athletic Department to get me on that track. My grandfather is a huge supporter and avid fan of UC Athletics, and so I exploited the people he knew to try to land an internship in the athletic department. Through the help of Karen Hatcher, UC's Assistant Athletic Director and a good friend of my grandfather's, as well that of Brandon Sosna, the Chief of Staff of the athletic department, who graduated from my alma mater (Sycamore High School) four years before myself, I landed an internship with the UC Athletics Media Department. I was very excited to get my first glimpse into the sports world, and these experiences helped me shape my own career passions.
My first football game as an athletics media intern was an awesome experience. Not only did I get to watch the game from the press box, but I also got to interact with media members from UC athletics, BYU athletics, and commentators from CBS Sports (I just handed them stats sheets after every quarter, but it was very cool to even be in the same room as them. I even got my own laminated media pass that gave me access to almost every part of the stadium, locker rooms, and press boxes. Cool stuff. However, the most amazing part was when I got to go onto the field and into UC's locker room to record and transcribe the players' and coach's postgame interviews. I was in awe of my surroundings and could not believe that I was sitting next to local and national sports media reporters. Getting to interact with so many important people and playing such an important part of the postgame (the quotes that I transcribed of UC players Orlando Pace and Tion Green postgame were utilized in the postgame wrap-up of the game on gobearcats.com) was such an amazing and fun experience and further solidified my newfound dream to work in sports. My most amazing experience as a media intern, however, was during my first basketball game in which I interviewed Lipscomb's head coach, Casey Alexander, postgame. My first game interning was the Saturday following Thanksgiving, and so many of UC's regular media guides were not at the game and Lipscomb did not bring their radio show to interview him postgame, and so I was lucky enough to do so. At first, I was nervous, but also very excited to do my own interview of a basketball coach. Not only did this teach me the importance of always being ready and accepting of new responsibilities, but it also taught me that you can accomplish some amazing things and find new opportunities that will lead you success if you work hard. I was also given my first opportunity to analyze sports statistics through this media internship. After a few months of working hard, working at least one sports game a week, and coming into the office for 5-7 hours per week, I asked my boss if he had any stats analytics projects that I could work on. Around this time, I had become extremely interested in sports analytics and had switched my major to business analytics to focus more on stats, and I was looking to gain some practical experience. For my main project, I was tasked with creating a database for the men's basketball team on Excel to track individual players' points, rebounds, assists, games played, etc. as Bearcats that media guides could reference to for future releases regarding where current players stood on the all-time records lists. Although it seemed like a rather menial task at first, I was very excited to work on it knowing that media guides throughout Cincinnati and all across the country may use the database that I created to reference to Bearcats' players stats in the future, and this project made me even more excited for future sports analytics projects. I vividly remember my boss saying that all the hard work I had done was "big time" when he looked over the finished product, as well as the face he made soon afterwards when he remembered that I was only a freshman at the time.
After creating the men's basketball statistics database, I started researching sports data analytics in my free time and connecting with people who have worked in the field. Just from asking Brandon Sosna who he knew, I was able to connect with Mike Magazine, a professor at UC who has published some research on sports analytics in the past, who ended up connecting me with Paul Bessire, graduate of UC's Business Analytics Master's Program and a renowned data analyst in the sports world. He created an analytics website called PredictionMachine.com that utilizes complex algorithms to predict winners of sports games. In 2014 and 2015, his website predicted NFL playoff games with over 70% accuracy (which is astonishingly high) and he has worked for ten different NFL teams in draft analytics strategies while a part of the NFL analytics company, Pro Football Focus. It was amazing to pick his brains and learn more about the analytics that he does in sports, and I hope that I can follow in his footsteps in my own career. After talking with him, I applied for a part-time job at Pro Football Focus as well for analytics of NFL player toles and positions. Although I did not get the position, I learned a lot of important information about football analytics and how it differs from other sports like baseball or football, and I am hoping to be able to co-op with them during my undergraduate career. When I was not talking to pros in the field or working on my own data analytics, I would research how analytics works in sports, watching countless videos and interviews as well as reading books and articles about how they work. I remember one night specifically where I stayed up until 2:30 AM watching an hour-long interview of multiple sports data analysts at MIT's Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. I am really passionate about sports analytics, and I am doing whatever I can to get into the field and be successful like Paul Bessire or those who were being interviewed at the sports analytics conference. So far, I think I have done a good job getting my foot in the door.
My passion for sports data analytics pushed me to change my major in order to gain the skills necessary to get into the field. I knew that I wanted to work in sports, but the Sports Administration major did not seem to be giving me enough opportunities to learn about statistics and data analytics in my classes. Something about taking Sports Administration classes did not seem right to me, and I felt out of place. Although part of me regrets starting off in Sports Administration to begin with, I would not change it because being in that major for the short time showed me what I do and do not want to do in sports. I am very excited to start fall 2017 in the Lindner College of Business with Business Analytics and to learn the computer and data skills necessary to be successful in the field. Also, I like that Business Analytics will allow me more opportunities to work/co-op in non-sports workplaces so that I can gain more knowledge of the field in general. Specifically, I hope that I can co-op with P&G during my undergraduate years because they are one of the most data-savvy companies right now that is also conveniently located in Cincinnati. I was also lucky enough to get into the Circle of Excellence within Lindner, and I hope being in this group can grant me better opportunities to co-op and prepare myself for a career in business analytics.
Besides my goals to work for P&G and Pro Football Focus in the future, I also hope that I can co-op with Reds and shadow Mike Bohn (UC's Athletic Director) during my time at UC. Baseball has been the model in sports for utilizing data analytics for better in-game performance, and I hope that I get the opportunity to work with the Reds Sabrmetrics analysts to gain some great experience. Further, to work towards shadowing Mike Bohn I have been connecting with many different people within the UC Athletic Department to demonstrate that I am an intelligent, diligent, and hardworking student who would provide a lot of value to the athletic department. Specifically, I am interning with Bearcats Marketing Association (BMA), the sports marketing department for UC. With this internship, I am very involved in the athletic department in terms of helping out at orientations, helping out around the office, and interacting with many other staff members. Furthermore, BMA does many presentations during summer orientations to sell football season tickets in which Mike Bohn is present, and I hope that I can gain some great sports experience through this internship as well as form a relationship with Mike Bohn so that he will recognize who I am and how hardworking I am the next time he was to see me around the athletic department or near his office.
Along with my BMA internship, I am also working in sports by working the ticket office for FC Cincinnati home games and conducting analytics research for the sports analytics website ERecruitFit.com. If I can, I would love to intern with FC Cincinnati sales/marketing team in the future to help them with analytics research, and so I saw working at their ticket office as a great way to get my foot in the door. Selling tickets is not as glamorous as it may seem, but I love the friendly and fun work environment of FC Cincinnati and everything that I have learned so far while working for them. My biggest achievement so far with FCC was selling 150 tickets on my own on game-day when I was asked to sell tickets on the opposite side of the stadium relative to the ticket office by myself. I was asked to walk around and sell tickets as well as try to persuade people to come to games. At first, I felt a little out of my comfort zone doing this, as I am normally not a super outgoing person, but I embraced the challenge and I now feel much less reserved when having to interact with strangers. Through this internship as well as my past ones, I have learned the importance of trying new things and being open-minded to new opportunities because they may pay great and unexpected dividends in the long run.
I am very excited as well for my upcoming opportunities with sports analytics and new data software through my internship with erecruitfit.com. ERecruitFit,com crunches data to look at how to better recruit high school prospects coming into college for athletics. Much of their data has proven that it is much important to get players that will fit into a coach's system than the best players available and that players who stay in school for all four years (rather than leaving after one year like many basketball stars do) give the school a better chance to win national championships, even if the players are not as skilled as the aforementioned one-and-done players. I have not conducted any research on either of these phenomenon yet, but I am currently working on a very exciting independent project for them about why Syracuse University is lagging behind other schools in their athletic conference in terms of donors and donations to their athletic programs. I was recruited to work on this project because I have a proficient understanding of Tableau, a data visualization software that is widely utilized in businesses across the country that no one else on the E-Recruit-Fit staff knows how to use. Because of my knowledge of this software, I have been asked to create a multitude of different graphs and data visualizations that will be presented to the Syracuse Athletic Department in the coming weeks. I am very excited to learn more about the software while also learning more about analytics, and I cannot wait to see if/how Syracuse utilizes some of the data sets that I have created to better their athletic donor program (on a side-note, I may get published as a co-author for the research I have helped to do as well). This has been one of the coolest projects that I have ever worked on because it has strong real-life implications, and it is very interesting to get a true taste of how I might be able to utilize analytics in my upcoming career in sports.
Apart from my internship experience, I am also a member of multiple student organizations. To begin, I have become a member of Forever Bearcats as an executive board member for Research and Development. Forever Bearcats is an undergraduate athletic donor organization that helps fundraise for athletics projects in conjunction with the UC Athletic Department. To be completely honest, I did not even mean to apply to their executive board originally, but when I realized that I had I decided to take advantage of the opportunity to become even more involved in UC sports. Being in Forever Bearcats (along with everything else I was and have been doing this year) has taught me the importance of managing and prioritizing my time. I would not have had nearly as fun of a freshman year had I not been very diligent in terms of planning, scheduling, and managing my time in order to balance school, internships, clubs, and friends. In addition, it has taught me to be efficient while I am working and to not get distracted, as I can finish important work much more quickly and with better quality if I focus on it and finish it in fewer sitting rather than working on it for longer periods of time with half the efficiency and effort. This has been one of the most important things I have learned so far in college.
Along with being a part of Forever Bearcats, I have had the unique opportunity to become a Founding Father of the Alpha Sigma Phi fraternity at UC. One of the largest and oldest fraternities in the country, "Alpha Sig" is known to be a fraternity to "better the man", and I joined this fraternity above any others because I enjoyed spending time with the high quality guys that helped build it. Going into college, I never even considered joining a fraternity, but I thought that Alpha Sig was extremely unique because it broke the stereotypes of what fraternities look like on college campuses. Many fraternities have at least a few guys who solely join for the partying and social aspect, but Alpha Sig seemed more determined to help others on campus by bettering themselves and others, which is what persuaded me to join. It is very cool to be able to build up a fraternity as well because we have the power to decide how we went to run it.
Finally, I capped off this school year by travelling abroad to Madrid for four weeks through UC's Spanish Language Program to study the culture and language. I am minoring in Spanish, and so I saw this as the perfect opportunity to become (close to) fluent in the language as well as immersing myself in the culture. Some of my ancestors were Spaniards, and so I have always been fascinated with the Spanish culture. On our trip, we got to visit the beautiful cities of Toledo, Segovia, and Escorial, and it was extremely amazing to live in a different continent with a different language and get outside of my comfort zone. My Spanish improved immensely on the trip, and I gained so many awesome experiences while I was there. The gallery below demonstrates the beauty of Spain more so than words can describe, and for more information on my experiences during the trip refer to my separate blog posts regarding the Spanish Sporting Culture.
In summary, this school year was filled with adventures, new experiences, some stressful times, many great times, and many lessons. The most important lesson I learned this year, however, is that mistakes often become great learning opportunities down the road. As a long-term plan, Sports Administration would not have been the right path for me, and in a perfect world I would have chosen to major in Business Analytics from the start of college, but this world is not perfect and incorrect decisions can become positive and correct ones if they are looked at with the right mindset. College is all about learning about who you are without anyone else really guiding you, and both good and bad experiences can be taken as opportunities for bettering yourself and being successful in the long run. American artist, Kevyn Aucoin, describes it best when saying that feeling "the freedom that comes from being able to continue to make mistakes and choices... is something that must be embraced". College is a place where, if you work hard and find your niche, then anything is possible for you, and I am looking forward to where my niche will take me in the next four years of my college career.
