During my last quarter of school, I interned with the Seattle Seahawks. I remained an intern for a full year, and it turned into a full-time job a year later.
I was fortunate enough to be a part of the Seahawks front office when we went to the Super Bowl in '06. Paul Allen was gracious enough to pay for all of us to go--on his private planes, stay at a four star hotel, have all of our meals and transportation paid for--and a ticket to the game, with an amazing party afterward.
After the party was over, around 3am, I went back to my room, grabbed my suitcase and hopped on a bus to head to the airport--a 4:30am flight so we were back in Seattle by 7:30 am for a 12:00pm welcome back rally at Qwest Field. My department (three of us...Kevin, Ryan and myself) was in charge of this rally...we had all had a combination of about 6 hours of sleep (on a plane) and were barely functioning.
But, we pulled it out and welcomed about 12,000 of Seattle's biggest football fans to Qwest field--each recieved a gift at the entrance and were seated in the stadium to wait for the players to return and thank their fans.
I was also with the Seahawks when the 12th Man was born. While we were in some hot water later on with Texas A&M for "stealing" the idea, we kept it and it lives on as one of the most recognized symbols in the NW.
While some may think that professional sports only employs staff during the season, it's quite the contrary. The offseason is really when most of the work is done, the season is when it is executed.
My job, planning, organizing, procuring, detailing, and wrangling people, props, giveaways, schedules, equipment and sitting through countless hours of meetings was most heavy in the off-season. During the season is when the magic happened, and all of the hard work during the other 8 months of the year came to fruition.
Links to some of the work I had a large hand in:
Seahawks Kids Club: I was given the HUGE responsibility of leading the charge on the development of the first ever Seahawks Kids Club. I researched other kids clubs around the NFL and outside, and was part of the corporate partner department effort to find a title sponsor for the kids club--Lowe's Home Improvement stepped up to the plate.
I designed a kids club memebership program including a membership kit, emails, quarterly gifts, special events, all tied in online to the kids zone.
In the first 8 months, we grew to over 2,000 members--no other kids club in the NFL was as successful in their first year.
Seahawks.com Kids Zone: This section of Seahawks.com was the first time I worked on an interactive. Being in charge of the Kids Club, I was also responsible for maintaing content on the Kids Zone.
NFL Alumni Rumble at the Ridge: Each year, I helped sell hole sponsorships for this elite tournament. Foursomes were sold and each foursome was given the priveledge of playing a round of golf at a TPC course with an NFL alumni.
Seahawks Youth Football Programs: I was very proud to be a part of getting youth around Washington state involved in football--we traveled for over two weeks every summer to small communities around the state and hosted over 400 players, and 15 communities at our youth football camps.
Touchdown City: My baby--this is where I lived during the season, and the off-season was spent getting everything ready for game day.
Want to know more?? It's pretty exciting--email me :)
