Contacting Coaches

This week I worked a total of 10 hours. On Monday I sent out the intro email to all the coaches that would be attending the tournament and waited for responses. For the remainder of the time in the office I spent it reading over emails sent by the staff and creating an extensive detailed excel sheet for the 14U West Tournament. The excel sheet took quite some time to create because I needed to make so many title cells and add in all the teams that said they would be coming even though they had not made a deposit yet. Some of the title cells included, team name, official team name, contact person, home and cell number, hotel they be staying at, if they made a deposit yet, paid in full, and many more. On Wednesday when I got into the office and checked my email I had received many responses from coaches. A lot of them responded telling me their official team name, where they would be staying, and a number to call them to receive a credit card number and charge a deposit on it. For the coaches that did respond, I also coordinated a time for them register a day or two before the tournament whichever was more convenient. My responsibility for the next couple of weeks leading up to the tournament was filling in the excel sheet with information, fieling away paperwork emailed to me and contacting coaches that I had yet to hear from.

Preparing for 14U Tournament

This week in office I spent a total 11 hours between Monday and Wednesday. Both days I spent a majority of my times preparing for the 14U tournament. I had to clear out the bin of folders that was used by last year’s interns which were used to file away insurance forms, copies of payments, hotel stay, and many other important documents on each team that would be participating in the tournament. Once I either recycled the paper or shredded some of the documents I reused the folders for this year by whiting out last year team names and writing this year team names. Not all the documents from last year could be recycled or shredded, the waivers had to be filed away in case a player or parent tries to sue USA baseball for some reason and USA Baseball could prove that they signed a waiver and are not reliable. On Wednesday once I was done making folders for all the teams to participate in the tournament, I found out that I would be going to 14U West tournament that is held in Arizona for 6 days. Once I found this out my next assignment was to create an intro letter to send out to all the coaches that would be at the 14U West tournament and let them know I would be their primary contact for questions and to send forms to. After finishing the letter and having Nate read over it, it was the end of the office day so I was told to wait till Monday to send out the letter.

First Week in Office

This past week was my first time working in the USA Baseball office. I went in on Monday and Wednesday for a total of 10 hours. On Monday when I arrived I met up with Nate Logan, who I will be working under, to see if he had any work for me. At first he told me to sit around with the other interns and wait to receive a tour of the office and meet everyone. On the tour we were shown where employees offices where and what their position was with USA Baseball. Along the tour we were shown where some storage rooms where equipment went for certain age groups such as U14, U16, U18, and women’s softball. After the tour two other interns and I that were in the office for the day were shown where our work space would be for the summer. I was surprised to be shown that our work area was two offices with each of us having our own desk. For the rest of the time being we cleaned off our desks and straightened up our office room. In our office where boxes of folders that contained team rosters, waivers, and copies of birth certificates from teams that participated in the U14 and U16 tournaments in Florida and Arizona last summer. We had to put all the team folders in alphabetical order and then put them in boxes to be filed away because the law requires you to keep the information on file for 5 years in case there is ever a problem in the future. After cleaning up the office and filing away papers, I was told that on Wednesday I would be receiving a work laptop while I was with USA Baseball which I was surprised to find out because in past internships I was used to having to bring my own. That was my first day at the office. When I arrived on Wednesday, the main entrance of the office was filled with large UPS boxes. The boxes contained hats, bats, ball bags, and shirts. All of the equipment was for national teams and before we could put the equipment in the designated storage rooms we had to count each box to make sure we received the correct amount. As you can imagine this took quite some time since there were well over 20 boxes of equipment. Once all the equipment was counted for and stored away, Nate gave me my laptop that I would be using and walked me through setting up my email for USA Baseball which is stephenfox@usabaseball.com. Once I had my email account set up that was the conclusion of my second day in the office.

Weekend Clinic

This past Saturday, March 26, USA Baseball needed me to come to the National Training Complex in Cary to help put on a clinic for both coaches and players. When I arrived at the stadium I was introduced to the other interns that would be working for USA Baseball this summer and we were all given a nice USA fleece pull over jacket to keep. Thankfully they gave us those jackets because it was only 50 degrees out with a slight drizzle. The first part of the clinic which went from 9-12 was for coaches and from 1-4 the clinic was for the young players ages 6-12. During the coaches portion of the clinic I worked the pitching station. At this station my task was to act as a catcher for the staff coach to throw to as he instructed the coaches on proper pitching mechanics. Once the coach’s portion of the clinic was over the USA Baseball staff fed us lunch from Jersey Mike’s which was nice of them to do for us all. Soon before you knew it, all the little kids started to pile into the stadium preparing for a good time. During the players clinic I worked the home run derby section. Being that the players were so young, we set up a black fence with blank sponsor sign boards a short distance away so they could hit homeruns. Once the older age groups came around to our station we moved the fence line back to make it more difficult for them to hit home runs. As the players took turns batting I soft tossed to them and it was difficult to get a rhythm tossing or finding their strike zone since all the kids varied. In the end it was a great time working with the kids because they were all laughing and having a good time being out on the diamond. At times the staff got to do home run derby also to show off to the kids and impress them with how far we could hit the ball.