First Week. 1/22/13 - 1/26/13

My first day was Tuesday January 22nd at the intern orientation, which was basically just information overload. The two supervisors in charge of the interns, Kristen Moore and Matt Catacchio, introduced themselves and we proceeded to go around the room and introduce ourselves to our future co-workers. The ice breakers were the easy part, as we had a lot ahead of us. We went over all of the duties that we will be responsible for during our time with the Sharks. We learned the rules, responsibilities and expectations that we have to follow. There was nothing that they told us that had me concerned at that point. It was a lot of obvious and common sense material. After going over all of the boring material, we went for a tour of the DCU Center to see where we would be working for the next few months. We visited every station where we would be working and at each stop Kristen and Matt reiterated what had to be done for each job. Seeing the ins and outs of the DCU Center was interesting and got me excited for the game coming up on Saturday. Upon leaving for the night, I had a headache due to all of the information, but I was confident and ready.

Saturday marked the first game day. The Sharks took on the Providence Bruins. Right away I was thrown into the mix. My first job was to prepare the list of rosters to hand out to all the fans upon walking into the stadium. After helping hand out the rosters and programs, I was put in charge of supervising the Shootout Booth in the main lobby. The Shootout Booth is an isolated area with a net, hockey sticks and balls where kids line up and take shots at getting the ball in the net. When a child scores a goal we all go crazy and congratulate them. It is always a good feeling being able to put a smile on a child's face, but in this instance it means a whole lot more. Creating memories is creating repeat customers. If we create memories, the child and their family will want to come back to the games all the time, and when children have kids of their own, they will bring them as well. The importance of selling the experience was evident right away at my first game. Unfortunately the Sharks lost the game 4-3 in an exciting shootout, but it was still exciting to officially begin my internship.