Last Day!

Today was the last day of senior project! I had completed my hours last week so I the only thing I had to do today was present my slideshow/movie in assembly. It was received exceptionally well and I was pleased with how it went. I want to put out a big thank you to my sponsor Gregor and the rest of the athletic department! I had a blast and loved it!

Thursday!

Today was fairly low key again. I spent the day wrapping up projects and getting ready for my final project exhibit. In the afternoon, I made paper plate awards for my softball team and then went to get icecream with them! Overall, it was a successful day!

Game Day.

Today is Wednesday! And it was a great day! It started off with the Marketing Committee meeting in the morning. The main topics of discussion were the style guide. This guide is being established because currently, there are a lot of different variations of the Proctor logo. From a marketing point of view, this isn't good. It is better to have a one logo so that anywhere you go, Proctor can be easily recognized. So this new style guide will have all of the different logos that can be used, and all of the different color schemes that it can be. For right now, Proctor's most prominent logo is the new Proctor "P." After the meeting, I made my way over to the athletic field house to meet Jake again for game day preparation. We lined both the baseball and softball fields. I think I did better my second time around with the lining! After working with Jake, I grabbed some quick lunch and then finished up with an

 Afternoon Activities meeting, in which the mission statement was finalized. I then went over to my freshly lined softball field for my game against Phillips Exeter Academy. My final softball game of my high school career! Overall, it was an amazing day with amazing weather!



p.s. We beat Exeter!

Nothing Rhymes with Tuesday

Today is Tuesday! And for us here in New England, we finally saw a day free of rain! Not only was it free of rain, but it also topped at 75 degrees! It's funny how big of an impact weather has on people, especially here at Proctor! The campus really livened up with the warmth. My day consisted of finishing up loose ends on different projects. I have a lot of things that I want to incorporate into my final project exhibit next week, so I worked on some of those. For the most part though, I just about wrapped up the end of term sports slideshow/movie. It's came together really cool. It will showed for all in assembly later this week so hopefully it goes over well! By this time, it was time for me to head off to the field for my softball game. Very successful and beneficial day, looking forward to game day tomorrow!

p.s. we beat KUA! #homeruncity

Monday Funday take two!

Today was the beginning of my last week on senior project. Going into this week, I have a lot more "freedom" you could say. But freedom is not really the word. I just have my own time to get things done. I have numerous projects that need to be finished up this week so I have to manage my time appropriately and get things done. This was exactly what my day consisted of. It began with the weekly Athletic Department meeting. This meeting went just like the previous two had. There was an agenda which listed the issues that needed to be discussed and they promptly were. A big issue that arose over this past weekend was sewage backup in various parts of the athletic building. Luckily, I did not have to witness this scene firsthand, however, as a student, I would like to say a BIG thank you to all that were involved in cleaning up the mess. As a day student, I basically lived in the field house these past four years. The locker room was my makeshift closet, the dining hall my hangout, and the gym my everything else. To hear that kids are being so disrespectful as to intentionally clog up drains, not once, but TWICE, truly disgusts me. I hope that the Proctor community as a whole can literally, clean up their act for next year. On a more positive note, the rest of my day after the meeting was spent continuing work on the end of term athletics slideshow.

Weekly Reflection

Week two went even better than the first! The week began with both the Athletic Department meeting Monday morning and then the Athletic Council Monday afternoon. The Athletic Department meeting consisted of issues at Proctor regarding liability. It was cool to see the progress, or lack of, from week to week. Much of the topics discussed in last weeks Athletic Department meeting were solved this week, whereas the issue of liability and gym, fitness room, use is still an ongoing issue. In the Athletic Council, the idea of an online store was discussed. I personally think that the online store would be extremely beneficial to Proctor. Having the ability to purchase any apparel online would be great. It would also be useful for each team to use as well. Because having been a captain for a few years, it is hard to get everyone on the team in the same place regarding what they want to order as a team. By having the online store, we can just use that and tell everyone on the team to order as they please. Tuesday consisted of projects, projects, and more projects. The first was researching character traits needed in being an athletic director. Although there were many attributes necessary in being a good athletic director, the two prominent ones were leadership and organizational skills, both of which I feel I have. Another project I've been working on is the end of term Spring Athletics show. I am spearheading this project along with director of social media, Scott. Wednesday was game day! However, due to inclement weather, mostly all games were canceled. Although this bad weather is really getting irritating, it was cool to see how the athletic department must respond to bad weather. A lot of work and energy goes into bad weather game days. Thursday consisted of preparing, creating, and sending athletic surveys to coaches, athletes, seniors, and parents of seniors. The goal of these surveys is to get information regarding the Proctor athletic experience. The hope is that this information will help Proctor athletics to be better in the future. The week finished up on Friday doing a lot of work on the end of term slide show. Throughout the week, I learned that you need to try to be proactive, yet so much of the job is reactive. I learned this through the different meetings, and especially on Wednesday when we had to react to the bad weather and work with what we've got. We had to adjust from what we thought was going to happen and come up with a plan b. Everything happened as I thought it would over the course of the week. There were no surprises, except for the unexpected downpour on Wednesday. I thoroughly enjoyed what the tasks I was given, the meetings I attended, and the day-to-day responsibilities. Overall, it was a very solid and fun second week!

Friday, Friday, got to get down on Friday...

Today was fairly mellow. In the morning I worked in the woodshop trying to finish up a jewelry box that I've been making all term, and getting video interviews of some seniors for the end of term spring slideshow. The afternoon consisted of editing the morning's videos and continuing work on the slideshow. It's funny how such a short 5 minute presentation can take so much time and effort. I probably got around 5 minutes of video for each student but only 15 seconds on each is actually valuable to what I am working on. On another note, one of my projects for senior project is to try and boost awareness with Proctor's social media. Proctor has both a facebook page and a twitter page. Both of which are being constantly updated with cancellations, team and individual spotlights, game schedules, and game results. This is new this year and is awesome. I have found that I go to the facebook page all the time in order to hear of cancellations and game scores. It is really handy and extremely accessible! So please, take the time to "like" us on facebook or follow us on twitter. You won't regret it!

Proctor Athletic's Facebook Page

Proctor Hornets Twitter Page

Survey Day

Today was a day filled with surveys. At the end of each term, it is the athletic departments responsibility to send out surveys to both the coaches and the athletes. The surveys ask about their experience, and other various questions regarding the season. Beginning new this year, the athletic department is also sending out surveys to the parents of graduating seniors, and also one to the graduating senior class. The one sent to the parents, asks how their experience with Proctor athletics as a whole has been throughout the past four years...ranging from extremely dissatisfied, to extremely satisfied. The goal of the survey is to get a general consensus of how parents feel about Proctor's athletics, we do recognize that the parents who take the time to fill out this survey will either be very positive towards their experience, or very negative. Although it would be ideal to have every parent fill out the survey to get a general understanding of how parents feel, having the two extremes of negative and positive will help us to figure out a happy medium and hopefully help parents with their experiences in the future. The survey that will be sent out to the senior class is also new this year. We are sending it out because at Proctor there is a perceived gender inequity regarding athletics. The majority of females feel as though they aren't treated as athletes the same way that males are. Examples of this would be old uniforms, no female recruits, and bad practice times. This however, is untrue. I will admit that before my involvement with the athletic department, I felt as if woman's sports were treated unfairly compared to the boys. But, after spending time in meetings and in the office, I have learned that both men and woman's sports are treated equally. The goal of the survey is to hopefully make it so other senior class girls recognize this as well. The survey will ask them how they feel there is gender inequality at Proctor, and what they feel the athletics department can do in order to address the situation. By having that information, hopefully Proctor can make a big step towards erasing the perceived gender inequality. Along with the survey's, I also continued work on the end of term slideshow/movie. Overall, it was a good day!

Rain, Rain, Go Away

Today was game day! It also rained for the majority of the day. This rain is really getting old, but one of the advantages of it was that as opposed to last game day, where it was a beautiful sunny day and everything went smoothly, today I saw how the athletic department works when nothing goes as planned due to weather. The plus side of the rain, was that I learned first hand just how chaotic a bad weather game day can be. It started off bright and early with a walk around all of the athletic fields. It started on the lacrosse field, where we examined standing puddles of water in front of all of the goal nets. Some of the puddles could be filled with something that absorbs the water whereas others simply could not. This is when I learned what it is for a field to be of no use, and to be "marginal." Marginal is good. Marginal means that the game might still be able to be held and the safety of the players would not be effected. No use, means that the game is canceled...end of discussion. After the lacrosse fields, which were determined marginal, we walked over to the baseball field, which was of no use. We then went over to the softball field, where I prayed for it to be labeled as marginal. No such luck. As you can see from the picture at right, our infield consisted of small ponds. No matter how much I wanted
the game to be on, tiny lakes and all, it was canceled. After all the fields had been evaluated, we then called the guy who maintains all of the fields to listen to his input. After a brief discussion, it is established which games need to be canceled and which ones can remain. Once this information is established, you then have to broadcast it to the students, parents, coaches, and opposing teams. While the students, parents, and coaches are told through social media and email, the opposing teams are told through a phone call to the other schools athletic director. Today's lesson learned: rainy game days are chaotic.

Character traits and pictures!

Today was a good day! I made good headway on two new projects. The first, is researching Athletic Director job descriptions and compiling a list of traits that an athletic director should have in order to be successful. Although the list so far is quite extensive, the most important traits of a good athletic director are leadership skills and good organizational skills. Fortunately, I feel as if I exhibit both of these. My leadership skills can be shown through my three years as both soccer and varsity softball captain. And my organizational skills can be shown through my perfectly organized notebooks. Along with this project, I also am spearheading the creation of the end of term Spring Athletics Show with director of media for Proctor athletics, Scott. The majority of my afternoon was spent gathering team photos and action photos for every sports team that played this spring. This will all eventually be used in a slideshow/movie shown in assembly at the end of the term. Tomorrow is Wednesday which means game day!

Monday Funday

Monday! The beginning to a long and dreaded week...or at least that's how I used to feel when I as attending classes. But not anymore! Monday's in the athletic office tend to run fairly smoothly. The day started off with Gregor and I meeting to create a plan for the week. We pulled up his weekly calender showing all of his meetings and obligations, and there is a lot. If I've learned one thing throughout the past week, it's that the life of the Athletic Director is a busy one. After sorting out what my week might look like, it was time for the weekly Athletics Department meeting. With this meeting much of last weeks topics were discussed in further depth. The surveys sent to students and parents at the end of each term regarding their athletics experience were brought up. As well as the seemingly on-going issue regarding liability. The issue of the weight room and gym were again brought up, but discussed more in depth, even going into details regarding summer use. The big issue is safety, whether it be safety of students, alum, faculty, and staff. If they use the weight room or gym Proctor is responsible. After the department meeting, I attended assembly and then came back to the office to start work on the end of spring sports slide show. When late noon rolled around, I attended the Athletic Council. There, we discussed perceived gender inequality with Proctor athletics, the general attitude towards sports at campus, the new online Proctor apparel store, and any issues that might be a problem for next year. After this, my day wrapped up with me interviewing seniors for the end of spring slide show. Looking forward to tomorrow!

Weekly Reflection

My first week as an Athletic Director intern went exceptionally well. It started bright and early Monday morning and ended Friday afternoon. Throughout the week, I attended the Athletics Department meeting, the Marketing Committee’s meeting, Afternoon Activity’s meeting, and I also sat in on a meeting with a Kelley Sports Inc. representative discussing uniform options for next year. The major discussion of the Athletics Department meeting was liability and how it is becoming a growing issue for prep schools, specifically at Proctor. Some of the more pressing concerns regarding liability at Proctor is the climbing wall, the weight room, and the throwing of lacrosse, softball, and baseball’s in the open gym with unsafe conditions. The Marketing Committee meeting was an hour and a half meeting talking about how Proctor could be better marketed. The main topics of discussion were the admission view book for next year and the website. This meeting made me realize that an Athletic Director can be and usually is involved in more aspects of the school than just the Athletics Department, such as the Marketing Committee. The Afternoon Activity’s meeting is a newly created group with the hope of bringing much deserved recognition to the afternoon activity’s at Proctor, such as theater and woods team. The objective of this first meeting was to try and create a mission statement regarding the afternoon activities at Proctor. This meeting showed me that the Athletic Director is responsible for not only representing athletics, but also all of the other options that Proctor has to offer in the afternoon. Among all of the other meetings, I also had the pleasure of sitting in on the meeting with the Kelley’s Sports Inc. representative regarding the uniforms for next year. This was especially cool because I got to see how an Athletic Director has to work within a budget and also has to try and be as fair as possible with regards to which teams get the new uniforms each year. Unfortunately, it cost about two thousand dollars for a set of uniforms, so only about four or five teams can purchase new uniforms a year.
Along with all of the various meetings, my first week also consisted of working on projects, and assisting the equipment manager, Jake, on game day preparation. One of the projects I worked on creating a spreadsheet that recorded each Proctor teams records for the past six years. After having this information, I then cross-referenced it with the list of disciplinary violations for the past six years. The hope was that there would be a correlation between years with the least amount of disciplinary violations and the year with best sports records. This was in fact proven. Throughout the past six years, there has been a definite correlation between winning athletic records and a “winning” community. Along with this project, I also worked on my on-going project of my own personal athletic philosophy, and what I think the role of athletics is at Proctor. Overall, my first week as an Athletic Director went really well!

Week 1...check!

Today is Friday! My day started off with about an hour or so long conversation with Gregor reflecting on the past week and discussing new ideas and topics for the future weeks. From there, I went to assembly and then came back to the office to sit in on meeting with the representative from Kelley's Sports Inc. to discuss and buy uniforms for next year. It was very cool to see how the uniforms are chosen each year. There are an extreme amount of different catalogs and brands that you have to choose from...all the options can make you unsure whether what you have chosen is the best one. I also learned about working within a budget and trying to be as fair as possible with which team gets the new uniforms each year. After the meeting, I grabbed some lunch, and then finished the day up in the office continuing on various projects. Great day!

Low Key

Today was Earth Day on campus! Earth Day is celebrated at Proctor by having a plethora of workshops all involved with improving the planet in some way. These workshops are all sponsored by different members of the faculty and staff, which meant that Gregor had a responsibility as a group leader all day. So I was left to work on my projects. I spent the majority of the day working on my own personal athletic philosophy. This is done through a lot of reading and research on the purpose of athletics and why we as a society take so much stock in them. I also completed the project of cross-referencing disciplinary violations with winning records: there is indeed a correlation between good athletic performance and well behaved students. After working throughout the day on the projects, it was time to go to my softball game at Tilton. Overall, it was a relatively low key day but a helpful one at that.

p.s. We beat Tilton!

Game Day.

Wednesday is game day! Due to blogspot malfunctions, I had a much more extensive post for this topic, but it was unfortunately erased. However, I will fill you in on the highlights of the day. My morning was spent in the Marketing Committee's meeting. This is a group of seven or so administrator's that work towards improving how Proctor is marketed. From there I went over to the athletic equipment manager, Jake, and helped him with his extremely busy game day preparation. The highlights of that included getting to know the area in which Jake maintains, and also having the ability to line the baseball field. It was my first time lining, but I think it ended up coming out alright:

Along with this usual lining, Jake added an extra personal touch of his own:

This was something that took only a couple seconds, yet had a big impact. It's a "P" placed in the warm-up batters circle for the home team. It showed me that even in athletics, the small things still count. After spending some time with Jake, I moved back over towards the Athletic office and sat in the newly created Afternoon Activity's committee. This committee was working on creating a mission statement that applies solely to the afternoon committee. After this, I left for my game against New Hampton. Overall, it was a fun and interesting day!

p.s. We beat New Hampton!

The Office

Today was my second day, and it was a day spent in the office whereas yesterday I was in and out more often. My day started at 8 am. From then until noon time I worked continually on a project. The project started with me creating a spread sheet with the records (win, loss, tie) of every single sports team, fall through spring, from 2006 to the present. As you can imagine, this takes up quite some time because there are roughly eight teams each term, three terms a year, for six years. It was quite tedious, but in the end the spread sheet looked good and helped me to continue with the project. The goal of the project is to take the spread sheet of Proctor's Athletic Records from 2006-11 and cross reference it with a list of students who received academic violations during this time period, and analyze it to see if there is any correlation between winning records, and "winning" students. The hope is that the information will prove that teams with players that have not been affected by disciplinary violations will boast better performance than that of a team that has players that have been involved with disciplinary violations. However, the project is not yet completed because of the huge amount of information that needs to be cross referenced and analyzed, but following completion I will fill you in on my findings. Asides from this project, I also started to work on my own personal philosophy of athletics. This is an on-going process and hopefully by the end of the next three weeks I will have created my very own philosophy towards athletics. This was overall a very successful day in the office!

Day one...check!

First day on the job went well! My day started out at 8:30. I met my sponsor, Athletic Director Gregor, and from there we embarked on a mission to the Development Office. Our mission was to scour yearbooks dating back to the eighties and secure pictures of various members of the faculty. I know this mission seems unlikely of that of  an Athletic Director, however, an Athletic Director at a New England prep school is involved in many aspects of the community, not just the athletics. Part of being an athletic director is also being an administrator, advisor, and coach, amongst other things. After procuring the pictures, we made our way back to the office where we got an urgent message to take a look at locker room three...its inhabitants consist of teenage boys, and it was a disaster zone...to say the least. This mess showed me that a big part of the job is being a people person. You have to be able to deal with people in a polite, and problem solving manner. After the locker room crisis, it was time for the athletics department meeting. This is a meeting that takes place at the beginning of each week and consists of both pressing matters, and different situations that need to be solved. From this meeting I learned that liability is a growing issue at prep schools, specifically Proctor, and it is one that needs to be promptly addressed. I also learned that in order for everything to run smoothly, ALL of the different members within a department need to work as a cohesive unit. From this meeting, we went to assembly and then lunch. After lunch, I spoke with both Gregor and the man behind the social media aspect of Proctor's athletics and we brainstormed different projects that I could undergo throughout the next three weeks. After talking about this I was so excited that I started right away on one. This took me right up until it was time for me to depart for my softball game at Brewster Academy. Overall, it was a fun and enlightening first day!


p.s. We beat Brewster!