You’ve read the book. You’ve explored the careers. You’ve been amazed and inspired at the huge variety of job options for people who love sports. You’re sure that a career in sports is the way to go. Now what? How do you make that dream a reality? Whether you want a career as a professional athlete or one managing a team, whether you have a dedication to healing injured athletes or enforcing the rules, there are steps you can take right now to start your journey toward the career of your dreams.
SCHOOL
Those six hours a day or more you spend in school aren’t just time away from playing video games and hanging with your friends. They are the first stepping stone to your dream career. Maybe you don’t love every class, but most classes can help you in a sports career. Here’s how:
• Sports is an international pastime, so learning a foreign language or two will help you communicate with a wider variety of people.
• Writing essays and book reports will teach you valuable skills in expressing yourself and communicating with others.
• Math and business courses are a must for anyone. This goes for athletes interested in making the most of earnings during and after an athletic career—hoping to manage athletes, teams, or any other sports-related business.
• Aspiring sports agents should study law as well as marketing and business.
• Biology and chemistry labs are essential to someone who wants to train athletes or go into a sports medicine career.
If you think you can’t, you won’t, and if you think you can, you will. When I’m tired at practice, I tell myself that I’m not tired, and I can push through. If you tell yourself you’re tired or if you tell yourself you’re sick, your body is going to follow the mind.
Kellie Wells
TRACK-AND-FIELD ATHLETE
Most jobs today require a college degree. Unlike high school, college is a time to zero in on career-specific classes. Look for a school that offers the programs you want and that is a good fit for your dreams, personality, and ambitions. Do your research before you commit to a college, and you’ll be happy in the long run. If at first you don’t find the perfect school for you, it’s never too late to transfer.
Remember, in both high school and college, your guidance counselor or career counselor is a valuable resources. Meet with that person often!
INTERNSHIPS
Internships are an amazing way for people, especially students, to get their foot in the door of their chosen field. An internship is generally unpaid in terms of money, but there is no replacing the experiences you’ll have and the people you’ll meet. Here are some of the great things you can achieve doing an internship:
• Get experience in the field you want to work in.
• Find out if your dream career is as good as you thought it was.
• Learn the basics of the industry from the ground up.
• Meet people already working in the field who can be valuable references and mentors, and provide wonderful further networking opportunities.
• Gain experience to put on your résumé, which can help you get a full-time job.
• Have the chance to go to industry events or meet celebrities or well-known business people.
• Get hands-on experience that you’d never get in the classroom alone.
SPOTLIGHT
George Steinbrenner: An Owner with a Sense of Humor and Serious Savvy
A powerhouse team should have a powerhouse owner. That was certainly true of the New York Yankees and their longtime owner, George Steinbrenner.
George Steinbrenner was born in Ohio on July 4, 1930. His family owned a profitable shipping company. While studying at Ohio State, Steinbrenner assisted the legendary football coach Woody Hayes. Later, Steinbrenner assisted the football coaches at Northwestern University and Purdue University.
Steinbrenner joined the family business in 1957 and later bought the company. After he became successful, Steinbrenner began investing his money in teams. His first purchase was the Cleveland Pipers, who played in the American Basketball League (ABL). Steinbrenner hired John McClendon, the first African-American coach in professional basketball. However, both the team and the league had financial troubles, and the ABL collapsed in 1962 after just two seasons.
Do you know what my favorite part of the game is? The opportunity to play.
Mike Singletary
FOOTBALL PLAYER AND COACH
On January 3, 1973, Steinbrenner and other investors bought the New York Yankees from the media company CBS. For the next thirty-three years, Steinbrenner became one of the most well-known and talked-about owners in sports. He became famous for firing—and sometimes rehiring—managers and other team officials. During his first twenty-three years of ownership, he changed managers twenty times. One manager, Billy Martin, was fired and rehired five times! Steinbrenner’s iron control and huge financial support helped the Yankees, however. The team was the World Series champ for three straight years (1998, 1999, and 2000). In 2009, the Yankees won the World Series again, notching their seventh win under Steinbrenner’s leadership.
Steinbrenner also had a sense of humor about his image and reputation. He made fun of himself in several commercials, hosted an episode of Saturday Night Live and, most famously, was a recurring character (although his part was played by an actor) on the hit television series Seinfeld.
Steinbrenner retired from active control of the team in 2006, leaving his two sons to manage the day-to-day ownership of the Yankees. Steinbrenner’s health began to fail, and he died on July 13, 2010, the morning of the All-Star Game. He is still remembered today as one of the most powerful men in sports.
VOLUNTEER WORK
Volunteering for a local organization or team is a great way to gain experience and also meet people who love the sport as much as you do. Some places for volunteering include:
• School teams
• Local or community teams
• Professional sports teams or organizations
• Teams that play for or hold events to raise money for local charities
• Sports-related businesses
• Sports museums
• Stadiums, gyms, or other sports facilities
How can you find out about volunteer jobs? The best way is to contact the team or organization directly and tell the staff you’re interested. Also, some foundations that hold sports-themed fund-raisers will advertise for volunteers in social media or in newspapers. It’s also a good idea to ask around. The more people who know you are interested in volunteering, the better your chances are of finding a position.
Name: Samantha Pearl Kaner
Age: 12
Job (when not studying!): Champion softball pitcher
What sports have you participated in and when?
I’ve played baseball since I was five years old, playing with the boys until fourth grade, including one year of travel with the AAU (Amateur Athletic Union). Then I switched to softball. I played Little League and travel softball for grades four through six. I played tennis competitively for three years but now, because of my commitment to softball and pitching, I only play tennis recreationally and will try out for the high school team this August.
What are you doing now in terms of education/sports participation?
We are first allowed to play school sports in the seventh grade, so I will be trying out for the high school tennis team in the fall, the middle school basketball team in the winter, and hopefully the high school softball team in the spring. I also am a straight-A+ student, play the trumpet, and am on the student council.
How did you get started in sports?
I started for fun with my friends when I moved to Suffern (New York) when I was four years old. I joined everything from soccer to basketball to Little League so I could make new friends.
What do you like best about sports?
I like the competition, but most of all I love my teammates. That’s why I ended up choosing basketball and softball as my two main sports even though I may have been the best at tennis.
Do you plan to stay in sports for a long time?
Oh my gosh, yes! My goal is to play Division I college softball, and I really hope softball becomes an Olympic sport again so maybe one day I can make the Olympic Team.
Never give up! Failure and rejection are only the first step to succeeding.
Jim Valvano
BASKETBALL COACH AND COMMENTATOR
What advice or tips can you give young people thinking of a career in sports?
Work hard! I started pitching so late compared to other girls, but I practice every day and work so hard, and now I am even better than most of the girls who started before me. Last summer my Little League All-Star team actually won the whole Eastern Regional Championship, and I pitched the final championship game. It was the most amazing feeling. I was even in the newspaper all the time, but most of all I am glad I spent the summer with the most amazing twelve girls, who became some of my best friends, and I will always love them and never forget the best summer of my life.
SPEEDY SPORTS1
Here are some stats on speed from the world of sports:
• Motorbikes race up to 360 miles per hour.
• A Formula One car can go up to 257 miles per hour. By contrast, the winner’s average speed in the world’s first car race, run between Paris and Rouen, France, in 1894, was just over 11 miles per hour!
• China’s Fu Haifeng’s powerful hit once sent a badminton shuttlecock flying at 230 miles per hour.
• Speed skiers can hit 150 miles per hour, while bobsleds zoom around the course at 90 miles per hour.
• Tennis pro Andy Roddick can serve a tennis ball at 155 miles per hour. The Williams sisters, Venus and Serena, have long dominated on the women’s side of tennis with serves reaching nearly 130 miles per hour.
• Several baseball pitchers have achieved pitches over 100 miles per hour. As of the start of the 2013 season, Nolan Ryan holds the official record with a 108-mph pitch thrown in 1974.
• Want to fly over the water? Try wind surfing, which can reach speeds of 60 miles per hour.
• Racing bikes can reach speeds of almost 50 miles per hour.
• A thoroughbred racehorse gallops at 40 miles per hour.
• A human sprinter runs 23 miles per hour. Olympic champion Usain Bolt has briefly hit 30 miles per hour in races!
What I love about the game is that the game doesn’t know who is supposed to win.
Sue Enquist
COACH
We can’t say enough about the importance of networking. Every person you come in contact with could be the person who sets you on the next step of your professional sports journey. So make friends with coaches and members of local sports organizations. Connect with people in the field you’re specifically interested in. For example, if you’re interested in broadcasting, make connections with the DJs at your local radio station. Be helpful, respectful, polite, and eager, and you’ll make a good impression.
SPOTLIGHT
Steven Purugganan: Up Stacking and Down Stacking His Way to Victory
He’s held a Guinness World Record and been a world champion—more than once. Born in 1997, Steven Purugganan has accomplished more than most people twice his age—all with just a set of plastic cups.
Sport stacking, in which competitors stack and unstack cups as fast as they can, promotes hand-eye coordination, quickness and focus, self-confidence, teamwork, and good sportsmanship—just as any other sport does. The World Sport Stacking Association, formed as the World Cup Stacking Association in 2001, hosts the World Sport Stacking Championships each spring in Denver, Colorado, verifying world records in age groups and divisions.
In addition to setting records, Purugganan has had a lot of other cool opportunities through sport stacking: as an ambassador of the sport, he has promoted events around the world, been on major television programs, starred in a McDonald’s commercial, and been a member of ESPN Magazine’s Advice Squad.
When not stacking, Purugganan is studying or competing on his high school’s cross-country team in New York.
DO YOUR HOMEWORK
Local connections are great, but they will only take you so far. You need to reach out to national organizations too. Check out chapter 11 of this book. It is chock-full of organizations and websites that cover every aspect of working in sports. The internet has made it easier than ever to connect with people around the world, so click that mouse or tap that screen and start exploring! If you have a dream and the determination to work hard to achieve it, the sky is the limit when it comes to your career in sports.
You can’t put a limit on anything. The more you dream, the farther you get.
Michael Phelps
SWIMMER
Note:
1. Tibbals, Geoff. Ripley’s Believe It or Not Sports (Broomall, PA: Mason Crest Publishers, 2011); Baseball Almanac, Inc., “The Fastest Pitcher in Baseball History,” Baseball Almanac, February 2003, http://www.baseball-almanac.com/articles/fastest-pitcher-in-baseball.shtml; and McClintock Brandon. “Aroldis Chapman and the 15 Fastest Pitches Ever Recorded,” Bleacher Report (April 20, 2011), http://bleacherreport.com/articles/671695-aroldis-chapman-and-the-15-fastest-pitches-ever-recorded.
