Traedogg Down Under

Finally–after seven weeks of waiting, I am finally officially interning somewhere. The place: Basketball Australia. The situation actually couldn’t have turned out better (at least from the outset). Today I met with my boss, Marc Howard and instead of a formal interview he took me across the street to the coffee shop, bought me a coffee and we chatted about the position and the organization. But let me back up….

As I have mentioned before, the Basketball Australia office is out at Sydney Olympic Park (literally where the 2000 olympics were held), and Sydney Olympic Park is located in Homebush Bay (Suburb of Sydney)… for those of you in WI, it would be like going from Downtown Milwaukee to Delafield or Hartland. Marc told me to meet him at 3:00, but having nothing to do all day, (and lets be honest here… me being who I am) I decide I want to catch a bus that would allow me to catch what I thought was the appropriate train and if all went well, arrive at 12:01 p.m. at the Olympic Park Station. 3 hours early;) I wasn’t sure how hard it would be to catch the appropriate train…because there are trains that run from Central Station (in downtown Sydney) to Olympic Park, but they run less frequently and not before 9:30 in the morning and not after 5:00pm (which wont be early enough or late enough for work). So, the alternative is taking a train to another city nearby and then taking an express train from that city to Olympic Park. Sounds complicated right? Especially since I have to take a bus from my house to the train station in the first place!

So, little Traci leaves her house at 10:30am to find her way across the many suburbs of Sydney alone.. and low and behold… everything runs like clockwork. I asked the right questions, got on the right trains, read the appropriate signs.. and end up at Olympic Park at 12:01! Go figure;) My next “problem” that I anticipated was finding my way from the train station to the actual office. Before I left the house, I drew myself a map of the city (since I couldn’t print it off my computer) and, turns out, the office was less then a block from the train station! And after locating the exact building (by about 12:10 p.m might I add), I smugly wandered over to a quaint park directly across the street where I took out the lunch I packed for myself and sat in the sunlight for the next 2 1/2 – 3 hours doing my reading. The point of this entire paragraph was simply this: initially, when i found out the internship was all the way at Olympic Park… I was all cranky about it. “Its too far!” “It will be too expensive to travel out there three times a week..” “blah blah blah blah blah….” I whined. Turns out, it was SO easy to get there and not only that, a lot cheaper then I thought. Whats more, I get to work at OLYMPIC PARK! Its such a cool area and I’m SO fortunate I get to work out there!

Not only that, but the organization I am working for is the overarching organization that oversees literally EVERY SINGLE BASKETBALL PROGRAM in the country. No joke. Obviously bball isn’t as big here as in the States, but in order to generate more excitment for the sport and run everything more effectively, all the bball leagues and organizations have come together (the driving business concept for this was “One Basketball”) under the name “Basketball Australia.” (my company). This includes their mens and womens national teams (that compete in the olympics and during the year play against other countries like new zealand, china, etc), and their NBL (national basketball league) (their version of the NBA)… WNBL (womens national bball league)… all their youth basketball programs (including rec and competitive)… wheel chair basketball… EVERYTHING. So its really kinda cool. They dont have college bball here, however, (or any sports teams at all for that matter) b/c their Universities here really emphasize academics and dont have the funding for all the sports like in the US. Each college has “sports clubs” however, but thats it.

Now, here comes the best part. The actual job. Originally, I was supposed to intern three days a week. But two of us “interns” got placed at Basketball Australia, and our manager doesn’t want our schedules to over lap. So I will only be working Tuesdays and Fridays every week, and on Thursdays every other week. (so i get a little extra free time that the other interns dont get.. and our internship coordinator (professor) is aware of this and knows the situation is out of our control, so he doesn’t have a problem with us working less hours for the same amount of credits). NICE. However, I will be working an 8:30 to 5:30 work day (9 hours… ouch).. and with an hour and 1/2 of travel by bus and train each way.. that makes for a 7-7 day. As far as the type of work, it sounds very similar to what I did for Athletic Communications at UW Madison. Above and beyond a bit of clerical work that all interns do everywhere, I will be corresponding with relevant media, setting up press conferences, writing material for newsletters and writing for and updating the Basketball Australia web site. Sounds good to me! Just goes to show you everything works out how its supposed to in the end. Sometimes you just have to be a little more patient, and maybe even deal with rejections and failures along the way for the right opportunity to fall in your lap. My first official day in the office is this Friday. Lets hope I’m this excited after that! (I did bring my camera along today for some pictures… beware.. i had a little bit too much caffeene today!) www.snapfish.com username: tlswartz@wisc.edu password: missyou

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 6th, 2005 at 5:28 am and is filed under INTERNSHIP-Basketball Australia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.