By Cameron Hamilton – In Katy Burford’s sports management class, the students are looking to improve and manipulate the game-changing factor of fan engagement and support. The class does this in cooperation with Morningside’s Pack the Stands events, held at specific home games for different sports throughout the year.
Sports management is a relatively new major on campus, and while Burford’s class introduces the field, she wants to teach students many aspects of sports management. She believes putting on these events will not only support our campus athletics when they compete at home, but also help her students learn multiple aspects of sports management at the same time.
“They’re getting into the game day operations, fan engagement, and marketing and promotion. They’re also looking for sponsorships and prizes that they’re giving away, even budgeting and resource management if they can’t get them through donations. They’re also looking at public relations, writing scripts, and getting all the social media aspect out,” Burford states. “It encompasses a lot of things in the sports management world into one small event where they’re getting a lot of guidance and help, so when they get the marketing and promotion class, they have an idea of how to do things so when they get more tasks, they are doing it more on their own versus having someone kind of help and guide them through.”
The events these students put on are not only good experiences for their potential future careers, but also useful for building necessary skills they can transfer to the sports management field.
“They are having to use their creativity, learn how to work as a team, and how to function when there are different ideas,” Burford explains. “It also helps with scheduling and reaching out to people, which helps grow their network because sports management is a lot of personal relationships; that’s sometimes how these jobs come about through the relationships you’ve made somewhere along the line.”
When people think of sports management professionals, most think of the general managers of major sports organizations or athletic directors at the high school and college level. However, Burford wants her students to realize, by creating and staging these projects, that many more behind-the-scenes careers are crucial to an organization’s success.
“There are sports agents, food and beverage at sports facilities, clothing, even some technical aspects like the video boards and all the latest gadgets teams use,” Burford details. “There’s so much that can be done in it, even just being a game day operations person. If you have big aspirations, like to go to the NFL or the MLB, you’ve got to start somewhere, so getting those experiences early while you’re in school can open some of those doors.”
While this may be the first time most students are putting on events like this, they are already learning what it takes to work in sports management, and these halftime events are opening doors to their futures through this experiential learning. The first event the class staged was on Wednesday, September 23rd, when the women’s volleyball team hosted the Chargers of Briar Cliff, and there are more to come in the coming months. For more information on when these events are happening, look out for information about Pack the Stands either posted around campus or via email.
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