My Personal Statement

As long as I can remember, I have always had a love and passion for sports. Growing up, I remember watching the Pittsburgh Steelers play on Sundays with my family; playing basketball with my cousins and siblings in our backyard basketball court; and attending my cousin, Veronica’s AAU tournaments at Carlow University. In middle school, I played basketball and softball. I remember in 8th grade I was the staring pitcher for the Milliones Lady Vikings softball team. In 7th and 8th grade, I was the starting point guard for my basketball team. Upon entering high school, I never really wanted to pursue basketball or softball on a collegiate level. I played softball all 4 years of high school because I enjoyed it. I knew that attending college would be the key to my success.

The first semester of my freshman year at West Virginia University I majored in Athletic Training. I quickly found out that this major was not the best fit for me. I knew that I wanted to work in the athletic field, but I was unsure about which career path best suited me. At the time, I was unaware of the Sports Management program, so I decided to change my major to English in order to strengthen my writing, oral and communications skills.

During my sophomore year I started to work with the Sports Communications office at West Virginia University. It was at this job that I finally found my calling on a career. At the Sports Communications office, I was able to become more familiar with what goes on behind the scenes of collegiate athletics. At the office I assisted in sending out media guides, cutting and copying all newspaper articles concerning WVU athletics, generating news summaries every week on WVU sports teams, filing newspaper articles in individual player files, and fulfilling WVU fan requests for media publications. Also, I worked at football, men’s and women’s basketball games as a game day worker. As a game day worker, my responsibilities were to generate and distribute statistical packets to the media during the games.

Since I do not have a lot of experience in sports writing, I want to obtain a internship with media relations or community relations with a sports organization in Pittsburgh, PA. Additionally, following the completion of my undergraduate degree in English I am planning to enroll immediately into graduate school for Journalism and Mass Communications/Media Arts. In the future, after many years of working in the field of sports, I aspire to become an athletic director for a Division I university.