2nd Master: Sport Management completed!

About 20 months ago Dave and I decided that Dave should get his 2nd masters in Sport Management to help him get positions like an Athletic Director, a Manager at an Arena, an Athletic Marketer, etc... Dave was an Athletic Director at Juan Morel High School in Brooklyn which he started all the sports programs from scratch and did awesome even though it wasn't a full-time position just like here... In order to get a full time athletic director position at a community college or college level it was almost necessary that he goes through this program plus he hated the first few months of working at Jordan High and we were thinking he won't stay there and we needed a planB... so naturally we came to a conclusion that he should pursue some kind of sports related management position which he would be really good at. He was coaching the boy's basketball team in Brooklyn and enjoyed that but he really liked planning sports teams, sports banquets and sports tournaments to get the whole school involved so why not do that for full time...:-)

The night he went to an informational orientation he came home very excited about what he learned. Apparently Cal State Long Beach(which is 10 minutes from our place) has one of the best Sport Management programs and many people come from all over the country and hard to get in... Each semester they only have 1 Learning Team made up of only 20 students or so and there is always people on the wait list... Well as you know Dave got accepted into LT20 18 months ago... and wow time flew by!

Every beginning of a new LT starting they organize a dinner called ROC and I believe it was the first time all the LT20 team got to meet each other informally... This was sometime in February just before their program kicked off. Nice thing is they invite families and significant others at that event and there we watched goofy LT17 celebrate their finishing of the program. Three people presented their Capstones and they did their awards and really truly silly power point of LT17 team but mostly drinking and people treating this as some kind of frat party... It was so embarrassing to watch and Dave and I were both thinking what did we get ourselves into... 

Fortunately LT20 turned out to be a great group of people who thought that LT17's presentation was just an embarrassment to the program and I believe they actually talked about NOT doing anything stupid like that in 18months...:-) 

At the end of February 2011 Dave started his program... I wasn't working then so Tuesday nights were just tiring for me but nothing crazy... Dave would come home from work around 4 and would leave for his class around 5 and finally get home to sleep at around 10... Each class lasts for 2 months and almost all the classes ended with a big project(mostly team projects). Early on he teamed up with pretty cool two or three guys to work on projects together and they tried to stick with one another as much as possible... I was nervous about team projects because I don't like team projects and I didn't want Dave to get taken advantage of since he is really good at projects and most importantly too nice to say no sometimes... (I didn't know those cool guys are really cool until after the first project...:-)
One of the group projects was about coming up with a product and to come up with a marketing plan/revenue plan, etc... They decided to come with a product called "Fannies For Life" which has Nascar racer logo printed on diapers... They hired me to design the packaging for them(though I forgot to give them my new address...:-)

We printed it out and pasted on an existing huggies diaper box to make it more realistic...:-)

(*When LT20 was taking "Sports Law" he had to team with another person to act as a defense lawer and prosecutor!? and for some reason the teacher wanted them to pick names to make up teams. Someone picked Dave's name and he said "Jackpot!")

The first 3 or 4 class projects involved getting together at our building(since we had a really nice conference room with wifi) and working till 1 or 2 in the morning then binding everything at Kinko's till 1 or 2 the night before their last classes... It definitely was a lot of work and on top of that he started interning for the LA Galaxy and Cal State Long Beach Dirtbags baseball team during the first semester(100 internship hours required) so a lot of weekend nights went into that... Dave definitely put family first and sacrificed his sleep to get his school works done so a lot of Saturday mornings we went to Disneyland until about noon and be home for M's nap, etc... I think living in a studio helped too because even though he may be working on his school stuff we were there together...:-) For that I'm thankful...

A real challenge came when September came and I had just started working and Madison started going to her pre-school... We were so thankful to have friends like the Mooney's(Liam's family) because on Tuesdays Dave has to go to class and Madison had to be picked up by 6 but I couldn't always leave work by 5 which is 15 minutes earlier than my regular end of day time so Jacqueline would pick Madison up with Liam and keep her at their house until I can come get her... It was a crazy time for us but somehow we managed although I don't think we can do that again... Once is definitely enough...:-) I really can't recall much of what happened after that but we did have our regular routine down and we would just tell ourselves once we can survive Mondays and Tuesdays we can handle the rest of week and that's what we did...

After this year started Dave's classes didn't demand a lot of group projects so that helped us manage our time... Most classes were geared towards his Capstone Project so he didn't have to work with other people's schedules like before. We bought our very first house during this time... Once Summer started he was working on his capstone project full force and maybe one Tuesday a month of his actual class which really helped us a lot. When Steve and Linda were here in July Dave was trying to finish his report which ended up being a thick pile and the Saturday morning of my parents' arrival Dave gave his presentation to the board of judges... Dave heard someone say that only 2 or 3 people actually pass on the day of presentation and the rest would have to revise and re-submit their capstone... Also 2 or 3 people would get picked to present at the ROC(ReceptionOrientationCircus!?) where they welcome the newest LT23 team and celebrate the graduating LT20. I was really hoping that he would get it done that morning but everyone was struggling to fit their presentation into 8 minutes(when the judges would cut you off) so I was a little bit nervous but then I was glad to find out one of the three judges in Dave's group(they split up the presentation into two groups/rooms) had Dr. Guthrie who once told Dave that he is the best she's ever had in the program and I hoped she hasn't changed her mind about that...:-)

Dave came home just in time to go pick up my parents and looked happy to have completed his program but he told me he stumbled at one area where he shouldn't have but the judges didn't ask a lot of questions so he wasn't quite sure what's gonna happen... The following day he got an email saying that no revision is necessary and he will be presenting at the ROC!!!
I'm absolutely not bragging here that Dave got A on ALL of his classes. I'm just so proud and amazed that he somehow managed to get ALL As while being full-time husband/father/teacher and he deserves the recognition for achievement.  so definitely not bragging...;-)

Last Tuesday we went to the ROC at CSULB with my parents in tow... Here is a little bit of his 10 minute presentation... He said too many "Um"s so he asked me to not put the whole presentation here... Also Madison of course had her Unchi emergency so I was so glad to use my parents card to take care of the situation and just be able to focus on being a video grapher/photographer...

 

 

 

 Madison likes to bust out her bible songs wherever she is so that's what she did until that punk guy interrupted her... Seriously who cares about cookies!

After we settled into our front row table we had some time to kill so Madison stepped up and entertained us...:-)

Some pictures were shown as a slide during our intermission... 

 

 

 

 

After his presentation he got the Capstone Project Award along with two other classmates then a few seconds later he went back up to receive the Beach Pride Award which goes to only one student in the class. Then once again he went back up to receive his 4.0 Award...:-)

While all of this was going Madison sat and did all three puzzles and went on to coloring... She did spectacular!!

Yay Daddy did it!!

 

LT20 Group Shot: Quite a few of them are going on to start their careers in pro sports teams all over the country which is quite exciting for the program and that shows how outstanding this LT20 group was!