Written by: Alex Rubinfeld

As a rising senior at the University of Connecticut, I made it my goal to find a summer internship that helped challenge me and introduce me to the operations side of the sports industry.  Growing up in Mendham, NJ, I made my New York sports-passion a starting point when looking for internships.  While I did not limit my search to the New England/Tri-State Area, I wanted to find an internship that was located in a big market like New York.  With New York in mind, I came across an application for a summer internship program with an organization called Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment.  Through a fellow Sport Management student relationship with Paul Wetteman, I learned more about the organization's culture and what type of work that I might be getting into, based on what he learned during his internship experience, last summer.  After having an over-the-phone interview with the Talent Acquisition Manager in Human Resources, I was later accepted into the program and would be working in the facility operations department.

Over the course of the ten week program, I was able to gain a plethora of insight from hands-on work, advice from supervisors, and the overall transition of Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment to BSE Global. Besides the change of the company title, the organization moved their office location from Metrotech to Sunset Park, Brooklyn, which is located a floor under HSS Nets Training Center. Though, I never saw the old office space, I could tell that the new move brought about a culture change to the organization and its employees.  Transitioning from the cubicle-type space to a modern, open and social space created a friendly environment and proved to be beneficial to my experience in networking/communicating with various departments.

In my position, I was required to oversee and maintain the integrity of the HSS Nets Training Center and BSE Global, which required me to walk around the facility checking the building and equipment for any possible damages or potential harm that may arise in the future.  It was the perfect way to pay close attention to detail as one little problem can lead to a complaint or severely damage the building.  Along with this, I also had the opportunity to assist in the managing of a few of the events staged in BSE Global and HSS Nets Training Center.  In this process, I helped set up, attend to issues or roles during the event, and helped break down the event once it was all over.  The process was very similar to the topics of event conceptualization/planning discussed in Danielle Upham’s course for event management.

With the opportunity to work these events and move throughout the facility, I was able to network with people ranging from personnel in each department to members of the Brooklyn Nets’ and BSE Global’s front office.  Aside from that, our program gave all the interns the opportunity to hear from department heads each week in a speaker series, in which they told us their path to where they are today, and gave us the opportunity to ask them any questions we came up with.  This experience gave me a sense of what working in this industry is like.  And at the same time, I was able to discover the benefit of learning how to take care of a facility on a day-to-day basis.  This summer internship in facility operations has prepared me with many lessons for managing the daily tasks of life, along with the potential of gaining access into fields other than facility operations.  It has opened up my life to a whole new development of ideas, while giving me an enhanced sense of time management, attention to detail, and the conceptualization of various events.