Day to day
This page has summaries from everyday that I worked as an intern at the Texas Rangers Youth Academy
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Today was my last day for my required hours for this mentorship. Thankfully, when I accepted this internship I was told that it would end in December. So, even though I am done with my course, I still have 4 months left in the internship.
For my last day, I got to set up for the softball playoff games and second round of the 15u playoffs. We only had 3 15u teams this year so they play in a double elimination tournament, while our 18u baseball and softball play in a single elimination. As the games began, Julia and I walked around and got pictures of our final Whataburger Rising Stars. This actually brings up a funny situation that was unfortunate for one girl and beneficial for another. Julia and I are taking our pictures and when we get to the softball fields, we ask one of the coaches where this player was. He pointed her out and had her come outside the dugout so we could present her with her t-shirt. Well come to find out, the coach told the wrong girl. So we actually gave the Rising Star award to a different girl with the same first name as the actually winner. There was not much we could do at this point because she already received the shirt and certificate. After all the pictures were taken, Julia left for the day and I was running these games by myself. After each game, I had to collect the score books from the losing teams because we had to track the number of games that the All-Star nominated players played in. Also after each game, I was tasked with updating the bracket so that we could give the winning teams their opponent and date for the next game. Working the playoffs was much more enjoyable than the regular season but that is to be expected. I have really enjoyed my time here so far and even though my required hours are complete, I am still looking forward to what the future holds for the remainder of this internship. Overall, this has been a great experience and I think it has definitely helped set me up for a successful career in sports.
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My Mentorship hours are coming to an end and I have mixed feelings about it. I am excited because I will finally be done with school and with logging my activities. However, I am a little sad because I have really enjoyed working on this webpage.
For today it was nothing but programming and computer work. As I have done every day I am involved with programming, I set up the fields with water and unlocked all the gates. Then, I printed off my list of kids and headed outside to check in all the 9u players. Once check in was complete, I walked the property to make sure that the coaches have everything they need and to resolve issues if there were any. I mainly wanted to make sure that Gabe and Kole were doing okay. The last group I checked on was the 9u group, which was run by Gabe and Kole. They were working on the indoor field with Fungoman and I noticed there was one of our kids sitting on the wall. I asked Kole what happened and he said "nothing, he just does not want to listen or participate". That is one thing we can not have because we are in charge of these kids for 2 hours. Having him sit off to the side can be a potential danger in the sense that he could get hit by a ball if he is not paying attention. Also, it is hard for our coaches to keep an eye on him in case he wonders off. So I had a discussion with him and got him to participate for the remainder of programming. Since the RBI playoffs started today, I did not have too report to programming this morning. When I arrived at the Academy the parking lot was full which was unusual because they games did not start for 2 hours. When I walked inside there were a bunch of women practicing on the indoor field. Come to find out it was the wives of some of the Rangers Players. Every year they play against the Houston Astros wives which I found to be kind of cool. They go all out too, they have a coach and jerseys and they actually run through situations that could occur during the game.
After I spent some time watching them practice, I had to prepare for the playoff game and the 2 softball games. So, I started by setting up the softball fields with water coolers and pulling the portable mounds off of the field. Then I set up the north side field for the playoff game. For the playoffs, we require our teams to use wood bats because we did not want any one team to have an advantage over the other. We supply the wood bats for the teams, so I placed the bats in the dugouts for the teams to use and I collected them after the game. During the game, I sat in the pressbox with a few of the guys from the umpires committee. We got on the topics of rules and I can honestly say I learned something. I thought being apart of the game for so long I knew most of the rules but talking with those guys I realized I knew very little. I really enjoyed talking with them and feel like I am better off in my career having done so. It was a programming day but it was organized a little bit differently for me today. When I showed up, Orlando told me that he and Julia will handle setup today. Which I found very strange but I was okay with it because it breaks up the monotony of programming days. They return back into the office and Orlando says, "hey, Julia and Jesse will handle check ins today as well". Jokingly I responded with "Am I being fired or something?" Orlando laughed and said no but I do need you to coach today. See the thing is, I used to coach for the Academy and I loved it but now as an intern I have more responsibilities and my pay has decreased since so I really do not want to coach on a daily basis. That is when Orlando gave me the shocking news of having to coach 12u softball.
I have never coached softball in my years of coaching so I had no idea what I was doing. The good news is that baseball and softball are practically the same game, the difference is in the way you speak and coach girls. I had to learn that on the fly while I was getting them stretched. Once practice actually started, I realized that girls are even easier to coach than boys. Their attention spans are longer, they listen and even if they do not like the drill we are doing, they do it any way without any questions. I actually enjoyed myself today and would not mind having to do it again. Programming has ended for the day and I walked the girls back across the street from the south side fields and then broke down the south side and locked up. Upon arrival back into the office, I needed to enter in scores from the last few days of the RBI season. Playoffs start tomorrow so we need to be up to date with the scores. Usually I would have this done already but with Julia being out last week, I did not have the time to sit down and get it done. I am really looking forward to RBI playoffs starting tomorrow because that means we are getting closer to the end of the season. Once the season is over we will have All-Star tryouts and I get to go on the trip to Austin to coach in the Regional Tournament. It's the day before father's day and we had a full day of games ahead of us. As usual, I set up all the fields first thing this morning. Since we had been getting a lot of rain lately, the tarps were on our all natural field and I had to pull those off during set up. With father's day being tomorrow, the MLB and Nike wanted to do something nice for the fathers and kids.
We have a good partnership with Nike and they sent us some batting gloves and arm sleeves for the kids to wear during the game. MLB also sent us the blue wrist bands and belts that all the players wear. Orlando and I walked to the fields and passed out all the stuff and made sure that everyone at least got a belt and wrist band. After everything was passed, the next step was to get action shots of some of the kids to put on our social media page. The most important shots were the ones of the kids wearing the Nike gear. Since Nike only gave us a few pieces, we randomly selected kids to wear them. We posted the pictures on instagram and tagged Nike baseball in the photos. They liked the recognition so much they plan to give us batting gloves for all the players for the RBI all-star weekend. Since we have started our programming session last week, we are busy 4 days a week. Today started out as just another day by setting up all the fields for programming and checking in kids as they arrived. There were a few parents that did not register their kids for programming ahead of time, so i had to assist them with that process upon their arrival.
Just before programming started, the rain moved in. We adjusted by moving a majority of the groups inside. With that, I needed to drop all the nets to split the indoor field into 4 quads. Our 9u group starts at 10, which gave us time to start our 18u and 12u baseball groups inside until the rain passed. Once it did pass, we moved those groups outside so that 9u could get started on the inside. After all the moving parts started to slow down, I began entering the kids into LeagueApps so that I did not fall behind and have to do multiple days in one sitting. Now that all my programming work is done for the time being, I was asked to repair some low spots on the turf fields. This is not the easiest process and it is very labor intensive. If you did not already know, turf has a base layer of rubber pellets and sand. There needs to be more rubber than sand but the sand weighs down the rubber to allow it to hold. I start by taking a small plastic rake and clearing the low spots. Then I take rubber and fill the holes, then add sand on top. Once both are put down, I rake again to mix the sand and rubber. After I rake, I take a tamp and flatten the spots. This process sometimes had to be repeated just to get the holes to be completely filled in. I have never worked on turf before, so it was nice to learn something new. We have been extremely under staffed in the coaching department lately. Juan is using me to fill me because I used to be a coach and know how programming operates. That does not give me any break from my normal job as intern.
As usual, I set up the fields with waters when I first arrived. Our landscaping and turf maintenance company needed all the nets raised in order to brush the indoor field before our players started to arrive. I took care of them before I printed off our registration list and started check ins. Like the rest of this week has gone, we were short with the 12u baseball group. Lucky for me we were working with our Fungoman partners. The guys that run the machine typically coach the group they are working with so all I needed to do was coach the other group that was hitting in the cages. About 10 minutes before programming ended, I left the group with Coach Roger and headed down to the south side to start cleaning up and locking the gates. On my way back to the north side I filled a couple more coolers to set out for the game we had being played on the big field. Finally, I was done outside and I sat down in the office to mark all of the participants into LeagueApps. With Julia being gone, my job has gotten much more hectic. Granted, we are short staffed and if Julia were here it would still be busy for me but I'm not complaining, the more I do the more experience I gain. Around March, my little brother Gabe asked me if it would be okay for him and one of teammates could move in with me here in Texas. Gabe plays baseball for Tiffin and is a freshman. When he confirmed that the two of them would be coming, I reached out to the director to see if they would be able to get a job coaching at the Academy. He approved and they started working today.
Even though my brother was there, I still had to do my normal duties. I set up all the fields for programming and walked Gabe around to show him the facilities while I did it. Julia is off today so I had to do all the check ins by myself, which is no big deal. However, once check ins were done I had to assist one of our coaches with their group because of the number of participants. Even though I was helping coach, I still had to do my intern job which means I had to refill water coolers in the middle of programming. We also had a few kids have sore arms so I had to grab them some ice bags from the concession stand. After programming, I cleaned up the south side on my way back to the office. Once I got into the office I had to mark all the participants into LeagueApps for our official records. I asked Gabe how his first day was and he said he really enjoyed it. I really hope that he and Kole enjoy their summer working with these kids. A few weeks back I mentioned I had one of the longest days as an intern. Well, today trumped that because I had to work a double shift today. When I first looked at the schedule I was not real sure how I felt about a double shift. The more I thought about it, the more I was up to the challenge.
The first started at 8am for programming and I went through my normal check list of things to do to prepare for it. Setting out the water coolers, prepping the fields and blowing up the hitting turtle. Once I finished with that, I started to check in the 12u-18u groups and getting them to their stretching areas. After it seemed like most of the kids were here, I handed my list off to Julia and headed outside to assist one of coaches, Dash with his 12u group. He had one of he biggest groups of the day with 33 kids and one coach for the whole group was not going to work, so I stepped in to help. Then programming ended and I clocked off. Now, it is about a 35 minute commute to my house from the Academy, by the time I got home and ate something it would be about time for me to come back for my second shift and it would be in rush hour traffic. Let me tell you, rush hour traffic in Dallas is no joke, just expect it to take an hour to go anywhere in the metroplex. So I decided to stay and just take a nap in the training room. My second started and it was another evening for RBI baseball. If you have not noticed yet, my days are almost always the same. The only thing that changes is the situations I get put in from day to day. Overall, most days are simple and consistent. I started the second shift setting up the fields for our games and talking with the umpires on Field of Dreams about the fence. Earlier this month, one of the storms we had turned into a tornado and knocked down the right field section of our fence. The umpires and I came up with a ruling if the ball were to be hit in that direction around the fence. Other than that it was very easy and uneventful, I broke everything down and headed home. Another Saturday full of RBI games and plenty of work to keep me busy. Julia had the morning shift and took care of the first few games. There was overlap in our schedules so she helped me set up the softball fields. Our partners, Mercy Street Sports, was using the fields for the morning so we need to get them ready for our games in the afternoon. One of the teams had to add a few players to their roster late because they had few drop out. Unfortunately, we did not have any jerseys for them because we already gave the team every jersey we ordered. Instead, we had a few black RBI shirts with numbers on the back that would make perfect substitute jerseys.
Once the games were started I had to go back into the office because there were a few parents that were stopping by to get their game tickets. The Rangers put on an event every season called Kids Take The Field and it is an opportunity for players to be on the field with the players and interact with them. We selected 3 of our Academy kids to participate in this event their parents receive free admission to the game. The first round of games ended and I went to all fields to refill the water coolers for the next games. During that I was approached by a coach asking if they could borrow a set of catchers gear for the day because their normal catcher would not be here and she has the equipment. The Academy puts together a few sets of catchers gear for situations like this so I had to go and grab a set for the team to use. The games finished and I had to lock up the fields and clean up before I left for the night. |
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