Today at Adrian College was my first time at a baseball game at the beautiful Nicolay Field. Craig Rainey, my mentor, is also the baseball, entering his 30th season. I was asked to assist specifically because it was “couch day.” There is a hill at the back of the baseball field where the student body usually puts couches outside to sit and watch the game. However, what I didn't expect was administration and athletics allow the student body to bring couches and other things out to the field and drink alcohol. According to Meg and past situations, baseball, nice weather, and alcohol create messy situations. However, I am guessing this year wasn't like that because of the weather. Although it was raining on and off, so there were no couches, my supervising job ensuring the students stayed off the field, and fences and cleaned up after themselves was just me enjoying baseball games. Unfortunately, they were not very good games because Olivet was not great; the Bulldogs won the first game 9-3 and the second 14-3. I am very thankful that Craig and Meg gave me the opportunity to work with them on and off. Since I was promoted to Assistant Athletic Director, they have been very understanding and supportive of my priorities at Tecumseh. However, I wanted to avoid burning bridges, so I told them I would work with them as much as possible. I was very busy with coaching, school, and the internship, so I succeeded in over 200 hours, but from what I have documented, I have officially achieved my 200 hours!
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While the athletic director was out of town for his children's basketball tournaments, I was in charge for the day. Since I had to cancel baseball and softball due to field conditions, all I had left to manage was a lacrosse doubleheader at 5 pm and 6:30 pm, but there were two different opponents. Unfortunately, the St. Catherine of Siena Academy did not have transportation and canceled our girls at the last minute. However, since I cannot go home between games since I live in Ohio, I was disappointed there was only a 6:30 pm game. The boy's game against Dexter was exciting but turned into a mess. Then following the game, our students stood in the middle of the field to protect our logo. Then the Dexter team recorded our kids on Snapchat and talked back to our parents. So I stepped in, kicked some of our parents out, and informed the coach of the classlessness. He disagreed, yelling in my face that I was disrespectful and I wasn't at the game at Dexter, and our team acted the same way. I told him that, even though I wasn't there if our students acted that way, I apologize, but two wrongs don't make a right in this situation, and they should get their things and go. He agreed I was right, shook my hand, and said they would get the kids on their way. Next, one of our parents comes storming the field, screaming and yelling at the coach. Then I had to step between the parent and the coach, almost having to shove him off the track. I proceeded to ask the parent to leave the stadium and wait in his car, but it didn't end there. Supposedly, the gentleman threatened the team that he was lucky they didn't have a gun. No one else heard the comment beside the Dexter coaches, and there was nothing else I could do at that point since it was in the parking lot, and no one could prove it was the same individual. Immediately I did inform the superintendent and the AD. Today, I started working on the Tecumseh Youth Sports camps. The youth sports program is a great fundraiser, and it's how we get the young athletes involved earlier; the earlier, the better. In addition, to learning new skills, kids can make new friends and learn about being a great teammates. Furthermore, it gives our athletes great responsibility to be good role models and teach the young athletes how to act since they look up to them. I created a flyer with all the sports camps we offer, grades, dates, and prices that will be shared on our athletic Twitter pages and our school's website. The flyer also includes the registration information via My School Bucks. My School Bucks is a web-based service that allows parents to securely pay for student school meals, fees, and other school-related expenses. This will make registration more convenient, so coaches or I don't have to worry about collecting cash or checks. In addition, my SchoolBucks collects all of the camper's information, including their name, age, grade level next fall, t-shirt size, and emergency contact. Also, the parents or guardian agrees to hold harmless Tecumseh Public Schools, its Athletic Department, and the coaches from all claims, actions, damages, and liabilities for personal injury or damage relating to or arising out of any summer camp activity. Also, I designed a Tecumseh Athletics T-Shirt. Campers receive one free t-shirt, so I will have to keep track of what camps they attend to avoid giving out multiple shirts since I do not plan on doing a sport-specific shirt. I am starting the advertising and ordering at the end of April because it will spread the word, give parents enough time to ask questions, and give the vendor enough to make almost 300 t-shirts. Moreover, being organized and prioritizing is essential to success in an athletic department to meet deadlines. Now that winter sports are ending, it is time to work on freshman, junior varsity, and varsity awards, which is probably the worst part of the job, but somebody has to do it. The process of keeping track of chevrons and first varsity letters is still a work in progress, but I will figure it out. The current process is a Google slide presentation where I can make copies for each season and only have to change the coach's name, the sport it is awarded for, and the name. In some sports, athletes must play a certain amount of games or goals, so I double-check with the coaches to meet their criteria. Then duplicate the award with the necessary fields and fill in the names. Rosters are completed at the beginning of the season on a Google sheet with the minimum name and grade. These rosters are shared with other athletic departments. However, the difficult part is chevrons represent the years on varsity. But if I gave a chevron to a student for each sport and for every sport they earn a varsity letter, I would never have them in stock, and they’re not cheap. Therefore, I have to be able to look and see if the athlete participated in another sport in the fall. I have attempted to keep track of this using our physicals platform with a feature of groups. The groups allow me to add each student and see if they were in a previous group. Before each season starts, the athletic department holds a coaches' meeting to discuss the expectations of our coaches, academics, or any other updates that may be necessary. I was in charge of hosting the coaches meeting for the Spring since basketball games were also going on. Therefore, I created a meeting agenda for all the coaches and topics of discussion. Also, I invited a few guest speakers, our snap raise representative, the fan club president, and an athletic trainer. Snapraise is a new fundraising program we have pushed onto our coaches instead of going out and selling cookies or other items. The platform is easy and convenient; all the athletes have to do is provide emails to send to friends and family for donations. Also, I invited our fan club president, who discussed the Athlete of the Week process and how coaches need to be involved in recognizing our athletes. Our fan club or booster club is very supportive and runs most of our concession stands, which can go toward helping teams pay for jerseys, new uniforms, equipment, etc. if they apply for it. From there, I discussed when the first official tryouts could start and the coaches' expectations before and after tryouts. Before tryouts, coaches are expected to hold a meeting for any students to get the information if they would like to try out and then ensure they have a physical on file by the first day of tryouts, or they will not be able to participate. Physicals are most important, which gives coaches a chance to ask questions. Since there were no new coaches, everyone understood the procedures. The only further information was the potential of our league expanding. By 2025, the SEC is expected to accept Jackson Northwest and Parma Western, which we did not vote in favor. Even though it is mainly the same information, I don’t think it is bad to reiterate the information to the coaches and bring everyone together with food. Finally! The high school did have power, but the wifi was still down. It was approved by the superintendent to host games today since the school would be open to people. Then came the game day stresses; I had to be at the school early to run shoot around for my team since we couldn't practice for a few days. Then I had to set up the gym and figure out tickets, how to print rosters, the champion night brochures, and the teacher appreciation awards. Since COVID, we have used GoFan, which is a digital ticketing system, but without WIFI, the only answer was to take cash. This caused a lot of havoc with people since they had season passes on their phones. Also, I didn’t have the awards all finished because they needed to be printed and signed by the coaches. Additionally, I didn't have the Champion's Night brochure printed and folded, but it couldn't be done without WIFI. The head of the IT department gave me the idea to use a hot spot. It worked for a few minutes, but I pulled up what I needed for the game. The teachers didn't get their awards till after the fact, but it worked out. The situation is eye-opening: how much technology is relied on and how I couldn't do my job without it. Unfortunately, this was one of those games where I couldn't just sit down and enjoy the game; there was consistent monitoring of tickets, game workers, and money. The school was canceled yet again due to the power being down. I am starting not to be optimistic about tomorrow's basketball games. However, there is still work to be done. Instead of the normal way how games are scheduled when the girl's team plays at home and the boys play away or vis versus, at Tecumseh, we do triple-headers because we are very low in girls' basketball numbers. Since we don't have a freshman girls' basketball team, the junior varsity plays first at 4 pm, then the girl's varsity plays after at 5:30; any girls that need to be brought up can play their 5th quarter. Then the boy's varsity team plays at 7 pm, which draws bigger crowds for the girls' games. The plan for Friday is to do the girl's senior night before their game, teacher appreciation night before the boy's game, and then champions night at halftime of the boy's game. It will definitely be a crazy night if all goes as planned. This is my first champions night, but the idea of is to honor each of our team success for the 2022-2023 season who have won an SEC, District, or Regional Championship. I made a brochure with a little summary of the following teams and their seasons: competitive cheer, wrestling, football, equestrian, and volleyball. The plan is to print and fold the brochures to hand them out to the fans to celebrate their child or grandchildren. Although it may be small, it is something that people can hang onto as a good memory. Last minute the head basketball coaches decided to have a teacher appreciation night where all the varsity players picked one teacher they would remember forever and who impacted them. I assisted with this event by creating a Google form and sending it to all male and female varsity basketball players. In this form, I expected each player to give two teachers and explain how they impacted their lives. Instead, I had the athletes give two options because I didn't want to have duplicate teachers. After completing the form, I let each coach know who the students chose. Then they were responsible for letting the teachers know they were chosen and what time to be at the game for the presentation. The coaches also wanted to give the teachers some kind of certificate. Using the explanations from the students, I created an award in Canva for the teachers to see why they were appreciated. Unfortunately, some of their explanations were inadequate, for example, “She is nice.” Needless to say, it was a pain to get them to write something a little more thoughtful, which is where the coaches had to step in and get me the information I needed. With their help, I could finish all of the awards, but I wasn’t sure how I would print and have coaches sign them since I wasn’t prepared for this project the week of and being at home. I was out of the office on Monday for President’s Day, which was a nice little break. Unfortunately, however, Michigan had a bad winter storm. The storm was so bad that most people in town had to stay in hotels because their power was out, power lines and trees were down, and it wasn't estimated to come back on for days or weeks. Also, our middle school, which was the old high school, is the central internet server for our district, which was down as well. Thus, the superintendent canceled all schools and events until power was restored. Although it might not have been an enjoyable time off for others, I didn't lose power in Toledo, so I had to handle cancellations and makeup dates for basketball games. But it is a crucial time for Girl's Basketball since Districts start on Monday, and we have one more league game to get in before then. Therefore, I rescheduled the games for Friday, hoping the power would be restored. Additionally, all other events that day had to be canceled per the superintendent. Thus, I had to reach other athletic directors, assignors, and our bus garage to notify them of the situation. In addition, a lot of work was put on my plate before Friday since I had power since we were having basketball senior night, teacher appreciation night, and champions night, all on the same day. I would rather watch Netflix on this snowy day, but it's a good thing we have technology because I don't know how schools would stay connected without cell phones or computers. Schedule Star is a web-based scheduling and communication program designed to help schools manage sports and activities schedules. It provides coaches, administrators, and other users the tools to add and edit events, access game and practice schedules, and communicate with other users. For example, when Tecumseh host invites or plan for multiple years of games with a school, we can send contracts to other schools. Additionally, the primary purpose of schedule star is for the community to have access to all events and cancellations since it is connected to our Tecumseh Indians Athletic page. Therefore, since winter sports are starting to wind down, it is time to prepare for Spring sports. I double-check with coaches to ensure their schedules are accurate or if there have been any changes. Also, we have limited facilities and field space, so I have to ensure no overlap between our varsity girls and boys' lacrosse teams and the track and field team. There can be overlap because the Michigan High School Athletic Association sends out a master schedule for all teams without facilities in mind. For example, a few Girl's Lacrosse games were scheduled for 5 pm and our Boys for 6 pm on the same day. It is an easy fix; in this case, I just reached out to the other ADs to do a doubleheader for 4:30 and 6 pm. Another mistake was a track and field meet, and a Girl's Lacrosse game was scheduled for the same day, and due to safety reasons, I changed the Lacrosse game since it was MS Tri-Meet. |
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April 2023
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