By: Vance Frazier
I achieved my first internship experience in September of 2019 from my undergraduate school, Eastern Washington University, as a game day operations and sports marketing intern. This was an internship I was very excited about because it allowed me to explore my options with what I want my future career to look like in sports marketing as I would be presented with the opportunity to work on my creativity for Eastern’s athletics on game days.
Our football and women’s soccer teams season kicked off for the fall season, and my duties included showing up to the stadiums hours before kickoff to help set up the banners, tents, tables and seats that would market out the school’s partners. During the game, the intern team and I would supply t-shirts, magnets and posters with the teams' schedules on them. After the game was over, our duty was to take down all the props that we originally set up before kickoff.
I really wanted to stay engaged with the internship throughout the week other than just game days, so I would show up to my boss’ office three days a week after my classes to help create trivia and game day graphics for the football team. It also allowed me to learn more about Adobe Photoshop which I thought was really cool but also rough in the beginning since it was my first time using the program. It also gave me a chance to learn more about my boss’ everyday tasks and duties as he was vice president of the college’s sports marketing and game day operations department.
With both seasons ending in November, we moved on to basketball. Responsibilities remained the same as I continued with my same eagerness to learn and develop my creative content and marketing skills especially with the program being our best and most accomplished team at Eastern. During media timeouts and halftime, I would help set up for the students and fans. Basketball season was by far my favorite experience because of the engagement from the students and fans.
With the regular season ending, we were just about to enter our conference tournament in Boise, Idaho, where I was hoping to get an opportunity to travel on the road for that weekend to learn from my boss’ responsibilities with college and the Big Sky Conference. The COVID-19 pandemic struck, unfortunately, and shut down all sports which means my internship came to an end. I was super bummed about it because I didn’t know if or when I still had a position with the team for the following sports season.
During the pandemic, I explored many options on how I could continue to work for a local sports organization. I managed to land an internship with our arena football team, Spokane Shocks, as a sports marketing and game day operations assistant. I also had the opportunity to work as a stat keeper, which was an interesting experience because I had not taken stats before. The internship only lasted for two months during the summer season, with only three home games.
Throughout my internship experience, my takeaways from both organizations were to stay in communication and engage with my boss to show that I really cared about what I was doing and
why I was doing it. I would always let them know how much I wanted to be involved with the team because it was such a high interest of mine and still is to this day to work for a sports organization as an assistant for marketing or communications. There’s nothing I enjoy more than showcasing my work ethic and drive to learn. I hope this work will allow me to successfully enter the sports marketing industry.
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