Friday Photos - My First Career Event in Player Development Role
Darien Harris, Michigan State Athletics, Will Speak at the 2024 Player Development Conference
2024 Player Development Conference
SPEAKER ANNOUNCEMENT
Darien Harris will be speaking at the 2024 Player Development Conference.
Title: Transitioning to New Roles in Athletics
When: Friday, May 17th, Morning
Purchase YOUR EARLY BIRD Ticket here: Get Tickets
Darien was a guest of The Player Development Pod, and you can listen to his episode here:
Friday Photos - My First Career Event
As a reminder, Friday Photos is additional player development content to dive into the player development programming and initiatives over my career in the role. This content is broken into WHY the programming and initiative happened, HOW we were able to do it, and the OUTCOME from the programming or initiative.
“Ed, we have to do something to engage our players with the massive amount of companies and opportunities here in Houston.” - Coach Major Applewhite
So here I was taking notes while meeting with my HC. (Which I advise anyone in the role to do.) I left the meeting a little overwhelmed as if I remember correctly, we had a one-month deadline to make this happen. BUT I was ready for the challenge and excited to learn.
I am literally smiling writing this as I go through documents leading up to the event and reliving this event.
WHY?
It is a great opportunity to get the players to focus on, ask questions, and gain understanding on careers. It also can create opportunities for networking and connection for players who take full advantage of the resources. It can help prepare players for the reality of football not lasting forever and there is a plethora of opportunities for them to create now for when the time comes.
We also had done it previously with entire athletic department under former head coach, Tom Herman, and it became a yearly event the players were accustomed to. You can see that reflected in the picture below. Major s/o to Zannie Mandola and Tory Teykl who did a great job setting it up.
HOW?
The previous career fairs were a huge success, but Coach Applewhite and I agreed that we wanted the players to have a learning experience about careers. We felt the career fair set up could not provide the opportunity for our student-athletes to sit down and truly learn about careers. So, with my head coach’s approval, I created an event that would provide what we were looking for.
The 2018 Houston Football Career Summit was born.
The first thing I did was use my resources, on the app of a all possibility, Facebook. You will see in the post this event was going to be a quick turnaround as I mentioned earlier.
I started there, as you can see there were 33 comments of people saying how they can help or tagging someone who fit the mold.
Once, this message was sent out and I knew I had a good number of professionals who I knew could be there I then started the logistics checklist: compliance, operations, facilities, creative media, football staff, athletic department staff, and campus staff.
The next two weeks were crazy but as I started to look in the professionals, then it was time to start communicating with EVERYONE. Schedules, parking, seating charts, food, suits, lockers, restrooms, location, all of it was getting hammered away in weeks.
I have come along way with chart and graphics since 2018, but you can see we had the tables sectioned by careers and our players would rotate and have to meet with a certain number of companies.
The players sat with the professionals and learned about the different industries and were able to ask questions and make real connections.
OUTCOME
The players were able to sit down learn about multiple careers and companies, they were able to ask questions and receive in depth answers, and they were able to make real connections with professionals in the Houston area.
The feedback from players was they enjoyed the opportunity to sit down, talk to professionals, ask questions and truly get to learn about a multitude of careers.
If you look closely, you can see Young Jones in the back assisting an athlete.
When we completed this program there were two things that made me incredibly proud:
Our players were able to sit down and have full access to professionals and career opportunities in Houston.
The support I had from the friends and family in my life who took time out of their schedule to help my athletes. My best friend is pictured above with the architecture sign and my former student from my first-year teaching is pictured below.
Hope you enjoyed today’s newsletter. I have ONE ask of you, IF Beyond The Field has helped you in ANY way please share below. I will take less than a minute of your time. Thank you in advance.