I've been in a little world I like to call Ticket Hell for the past week and a half. We have GOT to get tickets out to ACC Championship so we that means packaging up ticket orders, putting in parking passes as needed and creating hundreds of Fedex packages. Not too much to write about BUT Will Webb was kind enough to send us to the City Club for lunch with Judy Rose. The lunch was the perfect way to break up the monotony of the week, and what an awesome experience! Judy Rose is the Athletic Director for UNC Charlotte and one of the most well-respected figures in the profession. Judy Rose's bio can found on the the UNCC website (http://administration.uncc.edu/cabinet/Bios/rose.html). Most recently, she has led the efforts to bring football to to the 49ers, and with great success. The 49ers will play their opening season in 2013! She was also the first female to serve on the selection committee NCAA Division 1 Men's Basketball Committee. Rose got her start as a GA at University of Tennessee and got the chance to work with legendary Women's Basketball Coach Pat Summit and they remain close friends to this day! From their, she headed to UNCC where she started out as head Women's basketball coach and tennis coach, graduated to Head Women's Basketball coach and Associate Athletic Director, and then was selected as Athletic Director (i believe that was the order of events?!) It was so refreshing to hear a positive, non-feminist, outlook on women in this sport profession. She had a positive experience moving up in the profession, and seemed to offered more opportunities than she could even take (including being a finalist in the run for the head coaching position with UNC Women's Basketball...wow!). She told us that she was treated, for the most part, as an equal to the men she was working with. In fact, it was the women who treated her differently because she did not try to put herself into typical All-Women's sports corner. She could not have been more down to earth and interested in our career aspirations. Other than sports and careers we just talked about Charlotte, and she even shared with us how she met her husband...kind of just like a girl's lunch! Sarah and I had so much fun...and I hope she did as well!
On Friday, it was back to the ticketing grind, except without Sarah because she was getting her Side Line Reporter, which meant that I couldn't get away with leaving work early and subsequently missed out on all bu the last minute of the Belmont Abbey/ Clemson exhibition basketball game. Luckily, I ran into Will Qualkinbush, got to sneak in through the tunnel with him, and got to hug Ryan as he was running off the court at the end of his game. I got to talk to Susan, and all of the Basketball staff, Coach Brownell's girls, and even got to talk to Frank Smith (an assistant coach on OP's staff)! He was very impressed with my weather appropriate outfit, as he once called me out for not wearing a jacket and breaking down my immune system, and one week later I got Mono. Frank is starting his own drug testing company now and seems to be doing really well. It was really great to see a member of the old staff...brought back memories!
After the game I got to meet up with Mackenzie, Ansley Faria, and Amanda Suiter for a girl's weekend of fun! A girl's weekend of fun got invaded by Will Sartin (I know...how many Wills can one girl know?), but it was SO great getting to spend the day with him and his best friend from home, Brooks. It was his first game day off in his college career and I was so glad he chose to spend it with us! Again, on Sunday I woke up and did NOT want to head back to reality. It is so sad when you go to say "hey! I'll call you tonight and head over to hang out" and then realize that you will be in a different state in a couple of hours and that will be impossible. I'm pretty sure this will be my last weekend out of town for a while, but these weekends with college friends have been so rejuvenating and have served as a very important reminder to me of the importance of great friends. I wish I could see ALL of my friends...but those were some pretty good representatives for sure!
OH YEAH! And we beat NC STATE!!!! WOO HOO (I will be slightly less excited on the job...obviously I am very objective). During the game, I stopped by the Raycom Truck and Jimmy (in charge of Raycom Production) gave me a tour of the entire thing! I could tell that he enjoys teaching people about the profession that he is an expert at. He was so sweet to do that. I got to see what the difference is between the Producer, the Director and Technical Director's jobs. He also showed me the audio room and I got to hear the sound that was coming in from the Parab (the job I did when I worked the game). While we were in there, Rob (the producer) was trying to figure out which camera got the shot of Coach Steele passing out so that they could use it as a feature story for the next game. The truck was high energy during the show, the fun, easy-going characters that I know from the offices become ALL business and have no time to joke around. I loved just getting to see how that whole thing works.
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