On Thursday April 7 began my 3rd day working with Ohio Northern University. Coming in to my big office I started work on finalizing flight details for one of the big recruits out of California. While we worked very closely with the mother of the recruit in order to make sure that we set up a flight time that would work for her and her son leaving Oakland but also on their trip back from Ohio. I was able to get a great deal on a flight that left at 12:30pm Oakland time with only 1 stop over which was only for 45 min in Phoenix and would arrive around 5:30pm here in Ohio. The flight back would also be right around the same times going back, so we were very excited that we had everything set up for this recruit and his mom to make the trip here to ONU.
After working on this for about a half of an hour I started working on the football team’s trip to Utica, New York. This was very ironic for me because the last sports class I took I worked with Utica and their Athletic Director to discuss how they take advantage of NCAA grants that are available. Why it was ironic was because the time I was talking to them they were making the trip from New York to come here to Ada and now I am working with ONU and helping set up their trip to Utica. What my project was to do is to find hotels around Rochester, New York which is about 2 hours from Utica. The team is going to drive to around Rochester on September 8th and spend the night and then on the following day make the final 2 hour drive into Utica. What I am doing is researching the hotels that are in the area that are available for the day of September 8th and to find out the rates in which they are going to charge. I had found four great hotels which were right off of I90 outside of Rochester and called all four. I currently am waiting for 2 of them to get back with me but have received the rates from the other 2. What I have learned is I can now leverage the rates back and forth in order to drive the price down, which I have done successfully between the two so far. I also have to make sure that they have a full hot breakfast buffet in order to feed the team in the morning before they head out to Utica. While I am not working in the office this weekend I will continue to research other hotels in order to make sure dates are available to get rates that they will charge.
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On my second day here at Ohio Northern I worked primarily on scheduling flights for some out of state recruits. Why this is important is simple. In order for a program to be successful you often have to reach beyond the local high schools around you to find talent. In this case, Ohio Northern has been very successful at creating a pipeline out of Florida and that was my focus today. I was setting up flights out of Florida to Ohio for the next couple of weeks and trying to do it in order to maintain a low cost to the school. As we all know everyone has a budget to which they have to work within and at a Division III football program it is vital that the traveling costs associated to the recruits stay within the budget. Athletic budgets are very small at smaller schools so saving money where ever you can is imperative.
April 4th began my mentorship with the Ohio Northern University football program. As I began my day first day I went into the King Horn Center at Ohio Northern University into the Athletic Offices to meet with Coach Dean Paul. A brief meet and great with a few of the other coaches we needed to find me a work area. Because most of the offices were already occupied I moved into what I call the biggest office in the building, the VIP lounge that overlooks the basketball court and swimming pool. This has become my new office for my time here with ONU and I cannot complain because of the room in which I have to work.
So today was recruiting, recruiting and some more recruiting. The King Horn center was home to a lot of recruits looking to become part of the Polar Bear team. While the coaching staff was excitedly buzzing around I was working on finding the best deals available for airfare for a high profile recruit from California. After meeting with some of the staff and head coach I started on my first task which was getting the best deal available for the recruit and to make sure that the Athletic department stayed within their budget for recruiting trips. While day one was short, I cannot wait to get back at it tomorrow and learn even more as my journey continues toward my goal. |