You do…. What?
“Oh you work with the hockey team, that’s so cool! So what do you like do for them? Wait you, code video? What’s that?”
I have had this conversation hundreds of times over my four years working with the team. Each time the person’s general excitement about the sports aspect generally fades away when they finally understand that I spend my time staring at a computer screen and not playing on the team or even doing their laundry.
Initially, this sort of interaction would bother me to no end. I did not understand why people found dealing with smelly equipment or stretching out players’ quads to be more enticing than being able to be a part of the coaching process. However, as time went on this annoyance faded away and I grew to accept the fact that my work should happen behind the scenes without much attention.
In case you were wondering what I actually do, my official title is that of a video coordinator. This means that I deal with all things video; sharing archived videos between teams, breaking up live video into pieces that can be viewed at a glance by the coaching staff, and even breaking down opponent video for future matchups.
My first position with the hockey team was actually not even close to what I do now. For the first six months of my freshman year I was the in-house music player for home games, something that I dearly love doing, but is not anything that could be done as a career. My roommate held the video coordinator position to start, but by the end of the year I was phased in as he moved back to a playing career with a lower level team on campus.
I find this kind of work especially rewarding as it allows me to pair my love for sports and numbers together in a way that could be carried on to an actual career. The ability to understand and explain trends in data as well as being able to show a keen eye for detail are both traits that are highly marketable in the sporting world and not traits that I would be able to show off so obviously in many other collegiate avenues.
Although, as I write this my senior season has ended and my collegiate career is over, aside from training my replacement, I am far from done. The experiences I have had over the last four years with this team have solidified my goals to search for a position in the sports industry.
As I look for jobs I am constantly able to show off skills that I learned in this position that not many other college students would even have the opportunity to learn. It is because of these things and many more that I owe a debt of gratitude to the Mercyhurst Men’s Hockey program and thank them for helping me to both understand and follow my dreams for many years to come.
