You Don't KNOW Me

"You Don't KNOW Me" is a chance for you to GET to know me. This week's posts will consist of relevant information from my life over the past decade from high school to right now.

Monday - High School, Tuesday - Undergrad, Wednesday - Post Grad Internship, Thursday, Grad School, Friday - May 09 - Now

Part Two: Q-Town

Quincy University is a small, Franciscan University located in Quincy, Illinois. It's located on the Mississippi river and roughly 2 hours north of St. Louis. The city of Quincy left something to be desired during my time there, but I managed. I am well aware of the stereotypes that exist about Iowa - nothing but farmers, whole lotta corn, etc. and while I won't say thats not the case, there are large cities in the state and I happen to be from one. The Quad Cities, made up of two cities in Eastern Iowa (Davenport & Bettendorf) and two in Western Illinois (Moline & Rock Island). The 4 cities run together to create one metropolitan area, housing around 377,000 people, so while it's not New York, it sure as hell isn't a corn field either. Moving to Quincy, which houses only 40,000 by comparison, was a change of pace for me that I didn't particularly enjoy. In an effort to stress my discontent to my mother, I once remarked, facetiously, "they don't even have a Best Buy here!" They must be growing though because the day I was driving home as a graduate, Best Buy opened their doors in Quincy.

So while the town wasn't my favorite, I knew it would only be four short years and I would spend the majority of my time on campus so it wouldn't be as bad as I tried to make it seem. I already knew what I was going to be studying so I tried to schedule other classes that would best compliment my Sport Management degree. I took alot of small business and entrepreneur classes which really tied in nicely. My very first class freshman year was a new program the school had started called FYE or freshman year experience. I guess the concept makes sense - try to acclimate kids to college life - but in reality, the class was without any real substance. The only great thing about it was the teacher I had been assigned to. Pat Atwell was the Athletic Director of the Quincy Hawks and every week our class would congregate in the conference room of the athletic department to talk about whatever it was that Coach Atwell (he was the baseball coach prior to his time as AD) deemed relevant. I also took a class in the sport management curriculum with Coach Atwell, which I was happy to do. If there was any one person at the University that I thought I should get to know, Coach Atwell was it.

Towards the end of my freshman year it was brought to my attention that I wasnt really getting any practical experience in the field like Ol' Bob had told me to do a few years prior. Sure, I was going to class and doing well in them but I wasn't really involved in anything else. Having participated in three sports for four years of high school and rarely having much free time, I saw college as a chance to just be a student and live that fantasy college life - roll out of bed, go to class, go to parties, go to bed, rinse, repeat. It was a nice thought, but the love I have for the game of basketball eventually won out.

There were times I would be in the HFC (health & fitness center) playing pick up games or working out and would see the men's team practicing. I usually stared for a lil while, disecting what they were doing, comparing my old practice routines to theirs and so on. A friend of mine saw me and remarked how he could tell I missed it just by looking at me. He was right too, I did miss it. I talked with my former high school coach about what it was to be a manager on a college basketball staff because I didn't want to be stuck doing laundry and getting water for players during games or any of the other things that don't look all that appealing, if at all. Unfortunately, laundry came with the gig, but he convinced me that I would be great at it and there were so many other positives to it that I would be foolish to not try it. Shortly after the conversation with my former coach, I talked to my neighbor next door in our dorm, who was on the team about being a manager and he told me they could probably use the help. The next day I walked into the coach's office and asked if I could help. He responded with a big smile and "Yes. Where ya been all year!?"

I waited for the season to end before I ever talked to head coach Marty Bell, but there was plenty of work to be done after the season wraped up. My own experience consisted of moving on to track after basketball season; in college, I was introduced to year round basketball and if I thought high school basketball as a player was a time commitment, I was in for a rude awakening as a manager on a college staff.

The only other manager at the time was Bryant Biasotti. Bia took me under his wing and showed me the ropes. He would tell me which players wouldn't look at me as "just a manager" and who I should be weary of. He passed on more than a few crappy jobs to me but I figured I would need to know how to do all of it anyway since he was a senior and I would be running the show the next two years. I still give him a hard time about that, but he always had my back. When our new assistant coach came down on me for encouraging the players during an individual session, (apparently I wasn't allowed to talk when a coach was on the floor??) it was Bia who marched up to Coach Bell's office and told him he wasn't going to have his managers treated that way. The whole thing may have been blown out of proportion, but the gesture meant alot. Bia and I still talk almost daily about all kinds of things but inevitably we fall back into a discussion about who was the better manager almost monthly. There's nothing wrong with being number 2 Bia...

I was starting to get involved and it was with good people. Things were going in the right direction and I could tell the decision to join on with the basketball team was going to pay dividends down the road. It must have been after my first March with the team my Sophomore year that I started to see myself working in a different capacity than that of Athletic Director. I'm not entirely sure when the thought crept into my head but I'm almost positive it happened shortly after our conference basketball tournament and subsequent NCAA division II tournament game. The allure of the championship atmosphere was too great. The highs and lows experienced at a championship venue are unlike any I have ever had. The idea of working for a conference office had never resided in my mind up to that point and now, it's the only thing I want to do. Once I fully grasped the concept of a conference office planning and hosting multiple championship events all year I knew I had to find a way to be a part of it. I had no way of knowing if it was something I would ultimately like or not because I had never even considered it before and definitely had no experience with it, but I was determined to find out.

After our season ended in the NCAA tournament, I began doing research for my required internship in the field. I was aware that there probably wasn't a whole lot going on in a conference office in the summer, but that was the only time I had to complete one and since I knew I didn't need to do my internship until the summer before my senior year, I thought it would be wise to call various conference offices and put out some feelers about summer internships. Hell, I didn't know if conferences even offered internships - the whole conference office venue was foreign to me, but I desperately wanted to find out what it was like in a conference so I could compare it to a university's athletic department, which I was getting pretty familiar with at Quincy.

I always try to plan ahead, and the internship search was no different. I made a list of about twenty division I or II conferences around the country with names, addresses, phone numbers, email address - everything, and started calling each conference in search of an answer to a simple question: "Do you have an internship program?" I wasn't exacty sure who I should be trying to contact in these offices, it's not like their websites say "So & So, Associate Commissioner of Something - contact for internship information" so I did my best and aimed for someone with a high ranking title who I assumed would be in the know. I even tried to get in touch with the commissioners themselves at one point because of all the run around I was getting. Not one conference ever answered my question straight up. That is, until Fall of my Junior year when I was eating dinner in my apartment and my phone rang. The caller on the line was the commissioner of the Missouri Valley Conference, Doug Elgin.

The Valley offices are located in St. Louis and being that STL was only a 2 hour drive from campus it was the most logical place for me to intern. What's more, Coach Bell came from Drake University, which is a member in the the MVC and knew Doug well enough to pass on a good word about me. The Valley also hosted the 2005 Final Four, which I attended with my father. Unfortunately, as I suspected there wasn't much to do during the summer so there was no opportunity readily available. I was told that they do have interns and that I should apply for the following year because The Valley was going to be hosting an NCAA Men's Regional. My mouth was watering at the thought of working with the MVC as they hosted the one of regionals the only problem was that I was going to be a senior so it would not be possible. The silver lining though was that they would be hosting the Women's Final Four in 2009. Doug told me he was impressed by me and respected me for having the courage to contact him directly about a job. We've since kept in touch and he has proven to be a great mentor to me in my pursuit of a career in intercollegiate athletics.

with my pops at the 2005 final four

Ultimately, I was not able to secure an internship with a conference. Coach Atwell set me up with a guy from the Detroit Pistons, which would have been a fun summer in Auburn Hills, but the work was a lot of cold calling and sales which didn't interest me. He told me that he would put me in touch with the basketball operations staff though which I was excited about. The time to select my internship was drawing closer though, and by the time I heard back from the Pistons's operations guy, I had already commited to working with the director of our Health & Fitness Center and being a man of my word, I didn't want to go back on my agreement even if working with an NBA club would have been a great experience.

The internship at the HFC was educational, but it was directed more at running a health club or community gym than anything I was interested in, which was a given going in. The internship did help set up an opportunity a few years down the road however, so I'm glad I did it on more than one level.

In all, I'm glad I chose Quincy to study Sport Management. Ivan Paul, the Sport Management professor, left shortly after I graduated which made me thankful I attended when I did. In addition, the basketball team won a regular season championship, competed in 3 conference tournaments and 3 NCAA tournaments in my 3 years with the program, a first in school history. I know I never attempted a shot (which is probably why we were successful), but I like to pretend I was the reason for the success when arguing with Bia. If i had gone to a school like Iowa, I probably would have had a hard time getting involved with the basketball team and certainly wouldn't have been in charge as early as I was at Quincy. The experiences I had and the contacts I made while in school proved to outweigh the drab environment I found myself in. I wasn't sure what the next step would be but I was certain I would need another internship before I could land a job. A few months later I learned where I would be spending the next year and I couldn't have been more excited for a new opportunity to prove my worth.

Tomorrow's post will deal with that next step and shouldnt be quite as long. A lot happened in the 4 years at Quincy so I apologize if the post ran a little long.

Thanks for stopping in today and as always, tell a friend