San Francisco, CA. April 13, 2012 – April 15, 2012
This past weekend I attended the NCAA Regional Career in Sports Forum in San Francisco as Fresno State Athletics’ nominated representative. To sum the weekend up in one word, outstanding! I learned so much, met so many people, and came home as a better student-athlete. I cannot thank Fresno State Athletics enough for nominating me and giving me this opportunity.
Friday, April 13, 2012
We began the forum on Friday night with an introduction meeting. As I was the only student-athlete to attend the forum from Fresno State, I was forced to mingle with student-athletes from other institutions. I ended up sitting with the student-athlete’s from UC Davis and they were a great group of people. Coincidentally, they had a career panel the night before with Brent Sasaki, the Director of Corporate Partnership of the Sacramento Kings. Brent has become a mentor to me in the past couple of months through a family friend. Anyway, Brent had mentioned me in the career panel for the UC Davis student-athlete’s. We live in such a small world! One of the UC Davis representatives was interested in getting in contact with Brent, and I was able help out. Networking at it’s finest!
Saturday, April 14, 2012
The workshops began early Saturday morning in The Cannery room 209. It began with skills of being a leader, which was a great session. My favorite part of this session was defining ourselves and Courtney Lovely, the leader of the conference, told us to ask ourselves this question: “What do you want your tombstone to say about you?” At first, the question caught me off guard. But once I deeply thought about it, I asked myself, ‘how do I want people to remember me?’ So, this is what I came up with for my tombstone:
“She’s a small town girl who traveled the world with one
accomplished dream: live to laugh, love, learn, and ride.”
So now I ask you, what would you want your tombstone to say about you?
As the day went on, we had excellent workshop after excellent workshop. They included internship and graduate assistant panels, administrative panels, job search sessions, and my two favorites, the networking workshop, and the resume building session.
Paul Savage from UC Berkeley gave an amazing workshop on networking. He put networking in great perspective and taught us all how networking is one of the most important keys to getting our foot in the door towards our career in sports. Mr. Savage explained the do-s and don’t-s of networking and gave us numerous helpful tips to be an effective “networker”.
The resume building session was lead by Tiandra Finch; she also was one of the leaders in the conference. This session was, by far, the most informational part of the conference for me. I learned so many ways to improve my resume! Since the conference, I have put her suggestions to use and changed my resume around by personalizing it and editing the content, which has made my resume so much stronger.
The first day ended with an ice cream social and I left the conference room with greater knowledge about myself, the sports industry, careers, and how to land my “dream job” in professional sports.
Sunday, April 15, 2012
The final day of the forum was, once again, outstanding. We learned even more and had great speakers! My favorite one was Tony Stewart, an NFL Ambassador. He was a wonderful motivational speaker and spoke about the “Characteristics of Sweat:”
Stand up and speak of what you believe in.
Work hard, but work smart.
Effort and execution.
Attitude is everything.
Trust your technique and team in triumph and trouble.
He then ended his workshop with this quote:
“You’re not as good as you think you are when you
win, you’re not as bad as your are when you lose.”
I loved hearing for a professional athlete; he seemed to have a connection with all of the student-athletes in the room, which was great. We then had an etiquette workshop with DeNita Turner. She informed us all on the importance of our etiquette 24/7 and gave us one goal:
“In business as in life … begin and
continue with the end in mind.”
And with that being said, this is a great place to end. This past weekend at the NCAA Regional Career in Sports forum opened my eyes to all of the great opportunities life has to offer me. I met incredible people, developed astounding leadership skills, and defined my personal brand.
Lisa Beach 