My Internship Experience

One of my goals this past fall was to get an internship in sports, mainly because I had never gotten one before and felt like I was falling behind my peers in the program. The most direct way for me to get an internship was to work with one of the teams here at Syracuse. The teams I was most interested in working for were the football, men's basketball, and hockey teams since those are the sports I follow the most. However, one day I received an email from Dr. Paul about an opportunity to work with the women's lacrosse team. I knew this was something I couldn't pass up since Syracuse has one of the top lacrosse programs in the country.

The application for this internship was a very simple process. After receiving the email from Dr. Paul, I quickly expressed interest saying that I wanted to work for the team. Then, I received a reply from him saying he would connect me with the coaches. Shortly after, I was connected with the team's Director of Operations, Chelsea Leveille. We introduced ourselves over email, and she asked me if I was good to start the next day as I would be working with them on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. I was surprised because I did not expect to work the next day after expressing interest in the position, but I was very excited to get started.

Going into my first day, I had no idea what to expect. I had no clue what the rules of lacrosse were and therefore was concerned about whether that would be an obstacle for my success in this role. On the first day, I got lost navigating Syracuse's Athletics Complex which felt like a maze. Once I finally found the right spot, I introduced myself to the head coach, Kayla Treanor, and assistant coaches, Caitlin Defliese Watkins and Kenzie Kent. Although I was nervous, they were some of the nicest people I could've met, which gave me confidence that I was a good fit for the internship. For the first practice, I stayed the entire time to learn more about lacrosse rules.?

My role for this internship would be primarily taking place after practice. Once the practice was over, assistant coach Kenzie Kent, came over and explained everything to me that I would be doing for the internship. She told me I would work with their GPS system VX Sport and Microsoft Power BI, which they use to track the distance ran during practice and high-intensity sprints. This data would help the team prevent injuries they struggled with heavily during their previous season, as it was a huge factor in their loss against Northwestern in the NCAA tournament. The team struggled to score in that loss since some of their top attackers fell victim to season-ending injuries.

The first day was also a great learning experience as we had an issue with the VX Sport system that prevented us from correctly uploading the data. Since I had no prior experience with VX Sport or any GPS software, the coaches and I had to contact the consultant from VX Sport so that he could help us figure out what these issues were. VX Sport was a relatively new system for all coaches to adapt to use as this was the first season they were using the system. This was an excellent experience for me because I connected with someone who was an expert in the field, and the consultant gave me a complete background on what he does. He even put me on the spot, asking if I had any experience working with GPS. Even though I admitted I did not have any prior experience in the field, he was very positive and told me this is a perfect opportunity to learn a new skill. I quickly picked up how to upload the VX Sport data.? This was crucial since that's what I did for the entirety of the fall.?

Once the actual season hit, I was excited because I was added to their list of people allowed to stand on the sidelines for games. Even though my job primarily was to upload data at the end of practices, I was very excited to attend their games and committed to becoming an expert in the sport. The first couple of games were very exciting as the women’s lacrosse team got their revenge on Northwestern and won against Maryland, one of the top teams in the nation,? in a blowout. I'm very excited about the future for this team and working with them has been a great experience so far.

I believe this internship will help me in future roles because I was able to quickly adapt to working with a sports technology system that I had never used before. I also demonstrated flexibility by working in a sport that wasn't familiar with all of the rules. Lastly, throughout my internship, I have worked with the coaches to discuss and analyze the GPS data. This displays my teamwork skills and shows my analytical abilities. Overall, I'm having a great time interning with the team, and I encourage anyone interested to reach out to the coaches in search of any future opportunities!