Life As a NCAA Power 5 Mascot

BY: CRISTINA BYRNE STERNBERG, LOS ANGELES ‘22 PRODUCTION ASSISTANT

They get the crowd into a frenzy, all while having fun doing it! Various professional and collegiate sports mascots are iconic figures; it is an essential part of college sports and a university's history. What makes a mascot great is the audience, as it is about the franchises it symbolizes! 

Despite seeing them almost every time you watch a sporting event, what do we know about the people who are the sports mascots? Beneath the costumes, who are these "performers"? 

Cristina spoke with a graduate student whose name or mascot we cannot reveal due to the university rules but is the mascot to one of the Power 5 universities and has served as the school's mascot for the longest tenure!

Read the full blog here.

Take Two With Living Sport

BY: EMILY FRAJDOFER, NASHVILLE ‘20 PROGRAM PARTICIPANT & MARKETING COMMITTEE MEMBER

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My Living Sport journey started a little bit differently from a lot of other alumni. After I graduated in May 2019, I started a new position with my hometown’s National Football League (NFL) team, the Buffalo Bills. After the season ended, so did my position. I went back to the drawing board to figure out my next opportunity. This was when I was first introduced to Living Sport.

A 10-day Sport Business Program to London, England sounded too good to be true. A program that offers the chance to travel and continue your growth in the sports industry is very rare. It was something I never knew existed, but glad I had found it when I did.

Read Emily's full blog here.

Tampa Bay '21 Joins the Living Sport Family

BY: DANIEL GOLDBERG, NICOLE MARONEY, GREG SOKOL, AND JUSTIN McCARTHY, TAMPA ‘21

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Four members of the Tampa Bay ‘21 Digital Media Team joined forces to introduce some new members to the Living Sport Family. Daniel Goldberg, Nicole Maroney, Greg Sokol, and Justin McCarthy hosted one-on-one interviews with Tampa Bay Program Participants to get to know them a little better. These participants have different backgrounds, stories, personal and professional goals.

Now that the Tampa Bay ‘21 program is coming to a close, they have all joined the Living Sport Network. The program may have only lasted a short time, but the Living Sport Family is forever. Follow along to learn more about these young sport business professionals.

Read full blog here.

Career Roadmap: Working Outside the Big Four - Recreation Sports

BY: ANNA AUDLER, GLASGOW ‘19 PROGRAM PARTICIPANT & PRODUCT AND CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE MANAGER AT P&P IMPORTS LLC

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In my previous blog, I mention that working in sports was something that I had always wanted to do and sports was something that had always been a part of my life. When I made that decision to pursue a career in sports, I knew it was going to be a hard task to land a job in sports because I was earning my degree in Psychology, not Sports Management or any other related field. Then, I was asking myself a bunch of questions like “Are you sure you want to do this?” and “Should I just apply to graduate school?”, but I knew that if I just look for the experience and use my competitive nature to its advantage, I will find my path to working in sports. 

I figured my best bet of getting my foot in the door in the sports industry was to work for the Club and Intramural Sports Department at UCLA Recreation while I was in college. There, I started off as just a referee for our soccer, softball, flag football, and volleyball leagues and always making sure I stay focused on what my overall goal is: getting a job in sports. Luckily, my supervisors noticed my determination and work ethic and decided to promote me to Student Supervisor where I could gain experience in league operations like coordinating referees and basic operations and customer service. The experience I gained during college gave me the confidence to continue with my path, but not without falling in love with recreation sports. 

Read Anna’s full blog here.

MLL's 2020 Season Amidst the Pandemic

BY: JESSICA GARCIA, BARCELONA ‘17 PROGRAM PARTICIPANT & OPERATIONS AND MARKETING MANAGER AT NEW YORK LIZARDS

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2020 was not a typical year. Life as we knew it had changed due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak. The way we socialize, shop, become educated, receive healthcare, and work has changed. Many people have started working and learning remotely. Thousands of people were put on unemployment or were furloughed after thousands of businesses shuttered due to quarantining. Despite all of this, we have seen incredible healthcare heroes emerge, everyday people evolve and adapt to the changes, and we are all persevering through this “new normal.”

 For sports fans in March, the biggest question was “When are sports going to come back?” Seasons like the NBA’s were postponed, others, such as the NLL, were canceled entirely. I was very grateful to be part of a league able to participate in a modified 2020 season. It took a lot of creativity and manpower to come up with a plan so that we could get back on the field and bring lacrosse back to the fans.

Read Jessica’s full blog here.

Breaking into Sports? Try a New Hat.

BY: AUSTIN DYKSTRA, DUBLIN ‘18 PROGRAM PARTICIPANT & GAME AND STUDIO PRODUCTION, LAS VEGAS RAIDERS

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“We must be willing to wear many hats to put the best version of ourselves forward!” This is the advice that I carried with me after returning from the Living Sport program in Dublin, 2018. After graduating from college in California, I moved back to Las Vegas. When I moved back to Vegas, the city was only home to only 3 professional sports teams, two of which had just completed each of their inaugural seasons that summer. I was breaking into my sports career in the new sports hub, and actually, I still am breaking in.

I attended California Baptist University, where I majored in History.  My aspirations heading into school and even into my senior year of college were to be a teacher. However, that same year, I started working for my school's media production team for the athletics program, introducing me to instant replay, specifically for college basketball games. There, my aspirations changed.  This was the time when I decided that I no longer wanted to become a teacher and instead wanted to pursue a career in sports production! Now the only problem I had was, where do I start?

Read Austin's full blog here.

Career Roadmap: Working Outside the Big Four - Youth Sports

BY: ANNA AUDLER, GLASGOW ‘19 PROGRAM PARTICIPANT & PRODUCT AND CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE MANAGER AT P&P IMPORTS LLC

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One of my fondest childhood memories includes waking up early on a Saturday morning to get ready for softball tournaments, tennis matches, volleyball games, or any other sport I managed to convince my parents to register me for. I was always that child that would rather be out on the field playing with a ball instead of staying inside and watching cartoons like any other child my age at the time. Back then I knew I wanted to work in the sports industry, but if you ask my 10-year-old self, she would expect me to be a professional athlete by now.

Looking back, I know I would never have had any of my memories playing sports as a child if it were not for the adults that helped organize the different leagues that I would play in. As a child, you don’t notice all the hard work that goes into scheduling your tournament, ordering your jerseys, or coordinating the fundraisers to help pay for your registration fees; all you can think about is going outside and playing the sport you love while hanging out with your friends.

Read Anna’s full blog here.

Life After the Program with Connor Herlihy: A Participant that Never Stopped Living Sport

BY: WALTER LEMBECK, NASHVILLE ‘20 PROGRAM PARTICIPANT & SPORT COMMUNICATIONS STUDENT AT BRADLEY UNIVERSITY

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In my past blog, I wrote about current Living Sport participants. Let’s switch our focus now to one of our Junior Mentors on the program, the ever-reliable and hard-working, Connor Herlihy. 

Connor was a part of the first Living Sport program in Barcelona, Spain 2017, as a participant. His journey through Living Sport has now come full circle, as he became a junior mentor with our Nashville group and has since gone on to become the Director, Digital Media of Living Sport.

Connor is someone I related to a lot on the trip, given that he was a little more soft-spoken, but a hard worker from the get-go. After seeing him put in tireless effort throughout the ten days, I knew I had to pick his brain a little about the program.

Read Walt’s full blog here.

Walt's Living Sport Journey

BY: WALTER LEMBECK, NASHVILLE ‘20 PROGRAM PARTICIPANT & SPORT COMMUNICATIONS STUDENT AT BRADLEY UNIVERSITY

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Living Sport is like one big family. We're all connected and all want to help each other succeed. One of the biggest lessons I have already taken away from my Living Sport experience is to utilize your network instead of just using. What does this mean? It is the mindset to not only seek what others can do for you but also recognizing and acting on what you can do for them as well. This creates the foundation for our strong Living Sport network. This should be the golden rule for business, not only in sports, but everywhere else as well. 

With this new mindset, I thought it would be a good idea to highlight some Nashville ‘20 program participants through a blog while we are in Nashville on this sport business journey. It’s a win-win situation where I can utilize this platform to highlight a peer of mine within the program while brushing up on my blogging and interview skills. It also allows the Living Sport Alumni Network or possible organizations following our program to receive more information on some participants.

Read Walt’s full blog here.

Behind Every Group of Guys is a Great Group of Girls

BY: JESSICA E. GARCIA, LIVING SPORT BARCELONA ‘17 ALUMNA, ALUMNI BOARD MARKETING LEAD & OPERATIONS AND MARKETING MANAGER AT NEW YORK LIZARDS

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“Behind every great group of guys, is a set of great young women.” This is a quote from one of my High School assistant coaches, Jason Hoover, and has stood out to me for the past ten years. At the time that he said it, I knew it was meaningful, but I didn’t know how powerful his words would be to me, until now. Ten years ago, if you asked me if I knew that I was about to start a journey that would lead me to my career. I wouldn’t have believed you. 

As a young girl, back in 2010, I made the decision that I would manage my high school football team. I had a passion for sports, especially football and two loving parents, who wouldn’t sign a permission slip for me to be the kicker on the team. My health teacher in Middle School, Mr. Rado, suggested that if I had a passion for football, I should be part of the team in a non-traditional form. I took that advice and for 4 years, I moved with my class and managed the junior varsity, and later, the varsity football teams. When I first started, a lot of people would call me the “Water Girl”, but I was more than just the water girl. I wrote down stats on game day for our defensive coach, I handed out all the equipment, assigned uniform numbers, I assisted with the Athletic Director to make sure all players had up-to-date permission slips and physical documentation. I also ensured the were not on academic probation, which guaranteed that they could practice. I also coordinated our traveling for away games and secured everything that was needed in our medical supply bag for the trainer. For just a high school student, I had a played a fairly large role, and I loved it. 

Read Jessica’s full blog here.