Practicum Site and Location: Mr. Shoop, Athletic Director, Pine Richland School District, 700 Warrendale Road, Gibsonia, PA 15044 (724)-625-4444 x 6801, jshoop@pinerichland.org

 

Summary:

 

When I was figuring out whom to do my practicum with this summer, my sister suggested the Athletic Director for her old high school, Pine Richland High School. I wasn’t quite sure if the school district would allow me to complete the practicum with Mr. Shoop but I figured I would ask anyways and it was worth a try. As a matter of fact, I was the first student who had completed a practicum experience with Mr. Shoop. During my experience, I wasn’t sure what I would have learned and I learned a lot more than I ever thought I would have learned through the short amount of time that I had spent with Mr. Shoop. I learned how to multi-task through the rough and tough days, to push myself when the tasks seemed to get more difficult, to love what you do and to put passion into what you do but most importantly, to be respectful and respect other’s opinions. Throughout this experience, I can definitely say that the choice of a career path of being an Athletic Director is an option for myself. I also learned that in the summer, athletic directors have most of June and July off and that is a nice break to have, especially in the summer if you have a family and want to go on vacation with them.

 

Impact:

 

When completing this practicum, I had learned a lot about myself. I learned that I am able to complete a task if I set my mind to it and that I can do anything that I want with a strong support system behind me. Mr. Shoop has a wonderful family and his wife is very supportive of his work, which is why he does such a great job of being a father and also an athletic director. I also learned that people can and will be disrespectful but no matter what, you always should be respectful back because you never know who is watching. I also learned that when the going gets tough to keep on pushing and strive to set personal goals for yourself. On the other hand, I learned that I am able to trust myself in what I am doing and that others put their trust in me as well. For example, Mr. Shoop trusted me to be precise and exact in counting the amount of hours he had traveled plus the amount of mileage he had put onto his car for the entire year.

 

The areas that I gained the most personal growth in would have to be to trust myself on what I do and complete in a certain amount of time. By this, I mean that I learned to have more personal confidence in myself and to trust my own instincts. Mr. Shoop gave me a lot of advice in the career field of being an Athletic Director and now I have more of a personal outlook on the career field. Another area that I gained the most personal growth in would have to be how to fully comprehend my strengths and weaknesses. I learned that I had many strengths, which included my strong work ethic and my ability to work with others. But, I also learned that I had weaknesses some of which included multi-tasking and the forgetfulness to double, even triple check my work which is a key thing to do for an Athletic Director, being that you are in charge of most of the financial aspects of the sport side of the school district.

 

The areas that I gained the most professional growth in would have to be gaining more insight on the Athletic Director field and what to expect when put into certain situations. For example, Mr. Shoop had to deal with students’ parents a couple of times when I was at his office and some parents weren’t happy. Through this situation, I learned that some individuals will not like you and that is okay, as long as you do your job and complete your tasks because you can’t please everyone or have everyone like you. Another area that I gained the most professional growth in would have to be my demonstration of professionalism. I showed up every day to the practicum dressed very professionally and always talked with the idea of being professional in the back of my mind.

 

I have gained a few insights in the field of sport management from this practicum. What I have gained was that through being an athletic director, there are a lot of personal responsibilities. You are in charge of specific grades of the school district, in Mr. Shoop’s case though, he is in charge of the whole school district from elementary school all the way up to high school students. Likewise, I have gained knowledge that specific career paths in the field of sport management may not come easily to obtain but are thoroughly worth it if the time and effort is put into it. Also, I learned that it may be tough for myself to get a job in the Athletic Director field because it is mainly a male dominated field. I am ready for the challenge and to take the challenge head on and put my foot in the door with other Athletic Director’s as well to gain even more knowledge and experience.

 

Based on my experiences, there are a couple of skills that I would have liked to develop in preparation for this experience. Before this experience, I was a very laid back and soft- spoken individual when it had come to speaking my mind in certain situations. When I had started this practicum experience, I was not sure what to expect but I had gained so much self-confidence in myself and through the help of Mr. Shoop from his kind, thoughtful advice. A skill that I would have liked to develop in preparation for this experience would have been how to manage to multi-task before coming into the experience. As an athletic director, I learned that there is a lot of multi-tasking that occurs such as answering phone calls and emails at the same time or even talking to a parent and receiving a phone call at the same time.

 

This practicum, I can proudly say, has influenced my career goals. A few career goals I had for myself did not include ever becoming an athletic director nor did I think that I would be able to succeed at becoming an Athletic Director. Now that I see how much time and effort is put into becoming an athletic director, I can say that this is a possible job and career path that I would like to pursue when I come out of college. I know it will take a lot of work to make it to the top but with my drive and enthusiasm that I have for sports, I know that I can do it and the overall reward would very much be worth it in the long run because I would be doing something that I love.

 

Evaluation:

 

I can say, overall, that the practicum experience had met my personal expectations and by far have even succeeded them. I wasn’t sure how or what this practicum had in store for me but in the end I was thoroughly happy with the results. My personal expectation of this practicum was to learn more about myself and the work ethic that it would require to become an athletic director at the high school, maybe even collegiate level. I was set on a different career path and goal when I had first started this practicum and that was that I wanted to work in the communication department for a professional sport team around Pittsburgh and or I was willing to relocate and work for a professional team around the world. Now, I can say that I am very interested in learning even more about becoming an athletic director and this year I received a new job in the athletic communication department at Slippery Rock University. Through the dedication, hard work and passion, I now know the amount of work that it takes to become an athletic director. On the other hand, my only expectation to get out of this practicum was an understanding of what career field I wanted to go into when I graduate college. I am now more open to options such as working for a collegiate school or even a high school as an athletic director. You may not think that there are many differences between being an athletic director at the collegiate level vs. the high school level but there is. Within the collegiate level, the athletic director usually has only a few sports that they are responsible for and many other individuals are helping the athletic director. Within the high school level for athletic directors, some individuals have all of the sports in the school district and either have assistants or don’t have one at all such as Mr. Shoop for example.

 

I would assess my performance at the agency as something that I dedicated myself to and put hard work into every time that I had stepped into the school and Mr. Shoop’s office. I was excited about going into the practicum every day and I think I owe that to my supervisor, Mr. Shoop. If you have a good team of individuals that you are working with, that makes work and your job even more enjoyable to go into every day. I was very impressed on how well of a working relationship Mr. Shoop had with his two secretaries. The two ladies were very helpful and made sure Mr. Shoop was on track with the meetings and tasks that were to happen each and every day. Likewise, I feel as if I had made a good fit within the office and enjoyed watching and helping Mr. Shoop with every day activities. Every single day at Mr. Shoop’s office is different which I liked very much. I am very proud and excited that I had the opportunity to work with Mr. Shoop and to experience first hand what it is like to be an athletic director and some of the everyday struggles that he had to go through such as dealing with schedules, parents and coaches and remembering specific meetings and times.

 

In my opinion, I would recommend this site to future students. A few reasons why I would recommend this site to future students is because it is something to know what an athletic director does but it is another thing to go through the experience and learn first hand what they do every single day. For example, most people think athletic directors don’t attend most of the events that occur within the school district but that isn’t true. Mr. Shoop has gone to WPIAL finals and baseball games that were an hour to even four hours away. Likewise, you have to experience first hand what you would like to do before you judge a certain job or anything in that matter. Another reason why I would recommend this site to future students would be because of my supervisor, Mr. Shoop. He was a wonderful person and any questions that I had he would answer and even respond more in depth about the topic. I had learned so much more than I thought I ever would have within the past five weeks that I had worked within Pine Richland School District. A final reason why I would recommend this site to future students is that the experience was worth the while.