Perfect Game Super25/The Series 844-385-4833 Ex

I am now about halfway through my internship which means it was time for my supervisor to complete my midterm evaluation form with me. Overall, I believe it was a very successful evaluation. I think it was valuable because not only did it make me happy to hear how well they thought I was doing but it also helped to hear some constructive criticism. After hearing this I will now be able to improve on specific areas during the second half of my internship. This relates directly to what I learned about performance appraisals in PRT 359. My professor really stressed the importance of getting as much constructive criticism as possible even if you are doing an outstanding job. There will always be room for improvement and knowing this is the first step of being successful in an internship program. I feel as if the evaluation as a whole was pretty fair in general. I received almost all three's and four's but I think that I deserved it. Although I did receive high appraisal, my supervisor also noted on some areas that I could improve so she wasn't too lenient either. In the end, I really liked hearing her feedback and am excited to be able to use this feedback in future weeks.

1. One area of professional growth I would like to work on in the second half of my internship would probably have to be my technical skills. I am not very tech savvy and would love to be able to improve on this aspect of the job. We use excel and word almost every day in the office so it would be helpful to learn more about these programs. We use these programs to complete our roster books for the weekend tournaments and I have been in charge of typing the rosters up every Thursday and Friday. By the end of the internship I will make sure I am greatly improved in this area!

2. Over the course of this internship I have had a lot of very meaningful interactions with my customers. However there are two that stand out the most. One interaction was actually something that I explained in one of my past weekly reports. A player was ejected from one of the games I was scouting and his coach and grandparents became very livid. Two other interns and I took charge to take care of this and try to calm the situation. After a while of being yelled at we were finally able to resolve the problem. Another interaction that was meaningful happened about two weeks ago while working up in Staten Island, NY. I had been scouting a game and saw a player that really stood out from the rest. I went up to him and his parents after the game and asked for their contact information so that I could submit their child to play in a national tournament in August. They were uncontrollably happy and began to tell me how thankful they were for me giving him a chance to prove himself in front of college coaches/scouts. Seeing the smiles on their faces and hearing them say thank you over and over again made my day. Although one of these situations was negative and one was positive, they were still both equally meaningful to me in different ways.

3. I enjoy interacting with the clients/customers/consumers because it really helps me get ready for a future in this career. You can always work on your people skills and there is no better way to do this than real life interactions with your customers. The more experience I get with customers during this internship the more ready I'll be for the future. I also enjoy interacting with customers because it is satisfying when they let you know how great of a job you are and compliment you on different things.

4. I enjoy interacting with the following staff because all of them help me with different aspects of the internship. My internship supervisor helped me get situated in the office and feel comfortable with everyone/everything. If I ever have a problem I know I can go to her. I enjoy interacting with the secretary's because they are always kind and happy and help me with the technology part of the job. My head boss and the rest of the scouting department is great to interact with because they already have so much knowledge about baseball and I love learning from them. They are all hilarious and great guys to be around. Finally, I love interacting with my fellow interns because they all have the same personalities as me. I also like that we are all in similar situations so we can help each other whenever needed.

5. and 6. I believe I am doing a great job with my self-care during this internship. In regards to my cognitive self-care, I am making sure that I never get down on myself for one mistake and most importantly I try to never compare myself to other interns. I can usually deal with self-doubt and uncertainty pretty well by myself but if I ever need any help I know I could always go to one of my bosses or my parents. As far as physical self-care goes, a lot of my job includes physical labor so that is how I work out during my work days and on my off days I am constantly playing basketball, baseball, etc. with my friends. Finally, to deal with my emotional self-care I usually just talk about whatever is on my mind to my other interns and friends. I usually don't get very emotional so I don't have to worry about this aspect of self-care much. Overall, I am doing a good job of taking care of myself cognitively, physically, and emotionally during this internship.
Week 6: Post a Funny or Entertaining Story

I have had so many funny things happen during this internship. One thing that stands out though is the continuous bad luck of one of my fellow interns. Somehow every weekend he ends up working the longest hours and getting the least fun job. This past week of work was worse than ever for him though. On Thursday in the office he fell out of his chair in front of all the interns and our bosses and as a result got made fun of for a while. Once the tournaments started he was supposed to be scouting all weekend but unluckily his gatekeeper never showed up so he was forced to do gates instead. Finally, to top it all off we had a really bad storm that blew over all the portable toilets at his field and was told that he was in charge of cleaning them up. The other interns and I always have a good time joking around with him about his bad luck.

Two programming skills that I have used so far are Excel/Word and social media accounts. As for word/excel, I have had to use these programs almost every day that we were in the office. We used them to make rosters and other sheets needed for the tournaments. The secretaries and my other bosses did a good job of helping me learn how to use these programs much better than before. As for social media accounts, I had to use things like Twitter and Instagram to help market our company. Our social media directors helped me learn how to conduct my tweets and pictures professionally.

I believe I have handled pressure very well as an intern. Working for a large baseball organization can be stressful at times but I never let it affect my work. If I ever get stressed I have learned to just ask questions, stay confident, and remember that it could always be worse.

My internship doesn't use any specific software applications to assist me in my daily job.

My preferences at work include scouting and grooming fields. I don't mind working in the office and gate keeping but I would much rather be spending my days at a baseball field. Scouting is easily my favorite part of this because of what you get out of it. Almost every day I feel like I have had the chance to potentially change a young athlete's life. Seeing them smile and get really happy when you come up to them is something you can't describe. I also really enjoy grooming fields because sometimes it is nice to do some manual labor and work up a sweat. I love trying to get the fields to look as great as possible when it comes time for these elite athletes to play on them. They spend a lot of money to be in these tournaments so they deserve to play on a beautiful field.

Two of my professional strengths include being a good communicator and my ability to multitask. I believe I am a good communicator because I love talking to people and helping them with whatever they need. If any parent, coach, player, etc. has any questions during the tournament I am one of the people they will go to. I will go out of my way to help them and because of this I have received numerous compliments regarding this. I am also a great at multitasking. When working in the sport industry you need to be able to multitask. There is always so much going on and you always have so much on your plate. So if you are not good at multitasking you probably wouldn't be able to handle a job in this type of environment. These two strengths along with many others is what makes me such a great intern at Perfect Game.
Week 7: Helping Others and Receiving Help

This past week I had the week off because I was traveling to Fort Myers, Florida for work. Three other interns and I were invited to spend the rest of the summer in Fort Myers helping out with all of the national tournaments for Perfect Game/The Series. Here in Florida I am doing a lot of customer service so I have helped plenty of customers thus far. One thing that stands out though is when a parent came up to me asking about one of our programs. We are using a program called GameChanger that can be watched live and basically shows play by play for the entire game. It is usually used for fans/scouts who are unable to attend the games. One parent came up to me and was completely unfamiliar with the program so I showed her step by step how to get the program, how to find her team, and how to understand it as a whole. After helping her she was very appreciative of me taking time to show how it works.

As far as helping the department, I have offered many suggestions for how to improve future tournaments. Since this is the inaugural year for The Series national tournaments there have been a lot of mistakes or things that could be done better. Some of my suggestions included adding more teams, adjusting fence lengths for the younger ages, thinking of ways to recruit better talent, and much more. This week was the 12u national tournament and there were only seven teams/regions so there were definitely a lot of talented players that were left out of the tournament. I suggested making the region's smaller so that we could have more teams and therefore more players next year. Since this week was the 12 year olds and they were playing on larger fields, they had to put in a shorter fence. However, they made the fence to short and there have been some complaints about the amount of homeruns that are being hit. If we make the fences deeper for next year it would improve the tournament significantly. Finally, instead of just scouting players/having people suggest them to play in the tournament, we have decided to have a tryout for next year’s tournament.

Something that really helped my learning was actually something traumatic that happened yesterday. While pitching, a kid was hit in the head with a line drive and went down immediately. The athletic trainers came out and then realized that an ambulance was needed immediately. After finally being taken off the field and driven to a nearby hospital it was then time for us to find out all of the players contact info and figure out if there was anything we could do/fill out any papers. Although this was a terrible thing to happen it really helped me learn what to do in these types of situations. There is a whole process that goes along with an injured customer and I'm glad I was able to figure this out for the future. (The kid was later flown to a bigger hospital in Miami and found out that he had a fractured skull and luckily no bleeding in the brain.)

One of my staff members that has been a great positive role model for me was one of the guys from the scouting department. This person helped create change in me by always giving me constructive criticism while still helping me have fun and enjoy the workplace. He always lets me know when I do something great but he also lets me know when I need to improve on something. He has really helped me become a better worker by doing this because there is always room for improvement. However, it is also nice to have your hard work get noticed and by doing this he helps boost my confidence. Being able to hang out and learn from him is just one of the many reasons I enjoy going to work every day. I know if I ever need anything I can go to him for helpful advice. He and all my other awesome employees/bosses are what make me love this job.
Week 8: Ethics and Conflict

After completing eight weeks of this internship I have had to deal with many different types of conflicts. One specific incident that comes to mind that resulted in conflict actually happened this week. A few days ago I was working a game where both head coaches had a problem with some of the tournament rules. One of the rules involved substituting players and the other had to do with mercy run rules. Since there are a ton of teams, we usually have four fields running games at a time. Apparently, my employees at one of the other fields were unaware of the rules and were telling these coaches false information. This resulted in them being angry with us when we informed them of the right rules while they were playing on my field. As a result, I had to handle the situation in a professional manner. I immediately apologized for the miscommunication between me and my fellow employees but let them know what the right rules were. After calming them down I told them that these rules were my company's national rules and there was no arguing them. Because I spoke to them in a calm and professional manner they eventually accepted what I was saying, went back to their dugouts, and the situation was then resolved. While doing this I definitely had to use ethical decision making. First, I identified the problem, thought of different ways to fix the problem, chose the best possible option, acted upon this choice, and finally evaluated how the situation went.

At my agency, there are a lot of specific traits an intern has to have to be successful. First of all, you need to be passionate and love what you do. We are spending entire days working at baseball fields so if you don't absolutely love the game then this internship probably isn't right for you. Also, you need to be able to multitask. Sometimes I would have to scout, announce, use the radar gun, and deal with any questions parents/players had all at once. There is always a lot going on so being able to juggle all of these things is very important. Being patient is another trait needed to intern here. Whether it be dealing with a customer or a fellow employee you must have patience to successfully complete this job. Sometimes it is aggravating dealing with different types of people but you can't let it get to you. Finally, the most important trait of all is being a hard worker. I would not still be doing this internship if I wasn't a hard worker. The hours are very long, the pay is very little, and there is a lot of manual labor involved. Some days are really tough but I always push through and give it my all. As far as skills that are needed to be an intern here, the number one thing is that you must know a lot about the game of baseball. It would also be very helpful to be good with technology considering we deal with programs such as Word, Excel, and GameChanger. Finally, you need to have good people skills. I talk to hundreds of people every day so I have to be outgoing and love talking to people.

I have already completed my special project and I believe it went very well! I was in charge of completing an entire roster book for a whole age group in one of our larger tournaments as well as helping to make the all-tournament team list for the same tournament with my boss. I finished this a few weeks ago and there were very little mistakes if any. I definitely improved a lot with my roster making skills and this special project showed that. The all-tournament team list was made easily and well done after having scouted hundreds of players that weekend and deciding which ones deserved to make the list. Overall, both parts of this special project showed how much I have learned while working for Perfect Game.

Over this past summer of working for Perfect Game/The Series I have met a lot of great customers but there is one that stands out the most to me. A woman and her 14 year old son from New Jersey are the most memorable to me for many reasons. I met them both about a month ago in a tournament that he was playing in in New Jersey. I was sitting in the stands scouting his game and saw that he was easily the best player on the field. So I went up to him after the game and told him that I would love to submit him for a chance to play in our national tournament in Florida later this summer. He was very excited and directed me to his mother for her contact information. They both were so thankful and kept telling me how much they appreciated me offering him this opportunity. Well a few weeks had passed by and as I was getting ready for our 14 year old national tournament here in Fort Myers I see them walking up to the registration table. My boss ended up giving him an invite to the tournament and he was now representing team Northeast. After registration we met up and his mother thanked me again for everything. So throughout the next week she would sit next to me at most of the games and just have friendly conversation. As the tournament came to an end we said our goodbyes and his mother told me that if I ever needed a reference that she would love to help. Just knowing that I could make that much of a difference in a child's life is what makes this customer so memorable.

Knowing how tough it can be to supervise interns sometimes I believe my supervisors did a great job. They were always very helpful and provided great constructive criticism. They also held a good balance of having fun with us while still remaining professional. Throughout this internship I've known that if I ever needed anything I could go them and they would be very understanding. Finally, they always provided us with anything we needed during the internship. For example, our hotels and food money were almost always paid for. However, with all these positives there were still some things that they could have done better. Sometimes they were not very good with communication. There were times when we were unsure of what time to arrive to work and/or what to wear. An example is when our internship supervisor told us to wear business clothes to work one day and when we arrived our head boss told us that we were supposed to dress in clothes that can get dirty because we were going to work on baseball fields all day. They also made us do a lot of unnecessary driving and we had to store a lot of baseball equipment in our own cars when in the application it said we would be driving company vans to the tournaments. Besides for these few little complaints I think they did a great job overall supervising us.

I will give my supervisors honest feedback when I return to the office one last time before I leave for college. I will let them know how much I appreciate everything they have done for me and then provide them with a couple things that they could improve on to make the internship experience even better for next year. I will describe certain instances just like I did before and hopefully they are welcoming to better these areas. At this time we will most likely complete my final evaluation as well and say our last goodbyes.

My overall internship experience with Perfect Game Baseball/The Series has been nothing short of amazing. I could not have asked for a better way to spend my summer. There were so many positives to this job. Some of the positive aspects include gaining a great hands-on experience in the sports field, meeting new people/networking, being able to watch a sport I love all day, and much more. The only thing that I could say could be more improved is the communication of the organization. I believe I had too many bosses and sometimes the information getting passed down to the interns would be incorrect. If there were fewer bosses for the interns then it would make everything clearer and easier to understand. Considering this was the only negative aspect among endless positives, I would say it has been a very successful internship. The most beneficial aspects for me in terms of learning and growth would be the fact that I got a chance to try out a bunch of different job roles along with meeting tons of great people that will help me in the future. Being able to get a feel for multiple different job types is very beneficial because it helps you narrow down what you area you are more interested in working in for the future. I was able to gain experience in scouting, field maintenance, event coordinating, and administration. After filling all of these various roles I have realized that I would like to possibly further my career as a scout. Meeting a bunch of influential people was beneficial as well because they will be able to help me get interviews for future jobs and also write recommendations for graduate school. I worked alongside the co-founders of Perfect Game/The Series and was able to learn so many things regarding baseball/business from them. I would definitely recommend future students to intern with this organization because they will get a lot out of it just like I did. Like I mentioned above, they will make great connections, get a good hands-on experience in the sports field where they can apply what they learned in the classroom, and they will have a lot of fun working with some awesome people for the summer. I always knew that I wanted to work in the game of baseball and doing this internship has just made me realize even more how great of a decision it was to major in sport management.

As far as the PRT curriculum goes, I believe it was very helpful in completing this summer internship. I was really able to apply what I learned in all of my courses to a real life field experience. The specific classes that were the most helpful during my internship were Writing and Speaking in Sports, Public Speaking, Diversity and Inclusion in Recreation, Sport Administration, and obviously the Internship Orientation course. Writing and Speaking in Sports and Public Speaking were both very useful because I had to speak to customers on a daily basis in a sports atmosphere and sometimes even in large groups. Diversity and Inclusion in Recreation helped me since I had to deal with all different types of people. Gender and race are two huge things you need to be able to understand when working with large groups of people especially at the youth age. Sport Administration was helpful when I was working within administration and event coordinating. It taught me various things like what to do in case of lightning/other emergencies. Finally, the internship Orientation course was useful because it was the final stage in preparing for this internship. I learned almost everything I needed to know in this class and I can't imagine completing the internship without having taken it. I personally can't think of anything that was lacking in this curriculum but I believe if I were to take Sport Marketing and Sport Programming prior to this course they would have helped me out. For the most part, I think the PRT curriculum is laid out great and am very thankful for everything I have learned thus far.

I am writing this a week late because we were given the week off to prepare for the tournament this week and now that it is close to coming to an end I am excited to finish everything up and head back to Raleigh. I will most likely spend my last days in the office where I will complete both of my evaluations as well as put together my final portfolio. Can't believe I am almost done!