Sports Management kicked off the Annual 5K on Saturday

The annual Sports Management 5K run/walk was held Saturday, April 13, at the intramural fields, where students showcased their semester-long work of planning the event from start to finish.

Roughly 40 participants attended the 5K event. Junior Patrick Niehaus posted a winning time of twenty minutes and 36 seconds.

The process of planning began in mid-January, where students of assistant professor of recreation and park administration and sport management Chengming Hu, were assigned to different committees ranging from public relations, budget, sponsorship, race operations and marketing. Students taking SM 360 Sport Event Management took part in this project.

Members in the race operations group were in charge of mapping out the 5K course while other groups had tasks of getting a photo booth, creating the logo and designing shirts. Others were in charge of spreading the word and getting students to participate in the race.

“Our teacher, Dr. Hu, does this every semester, but we have to plan everything and he puts us into groups,” sports management minor Megan Dexter said.

Dexter said the annual race raises money for a sports management scholarship that goes to a couple of kids each year. This year, the event raised an estimated $700.

Working on this project not only teaches students the importance of sports management skills but how valuable each job is.

Sports management minor Aaron Crowell, who was part of the marketing committee, learned quite a bit from the project.

“I learned how important marketing is — it’s everything, and we would not have had any people if we didn’t do our job,” Crowell said. “It was all about working together too and making sure that everyone else did their job. We’re dependent on other groups to make sure they got their stuff done so that we can do our tasks.”

Members of the marketing committee focused their time on spreading the word to students around campus.

“I was in charge of the marketing committee so we had to get flyers ready, running social media and getting the word out there,” Crowell said. “We were also in charge of getting t-shirts made, medals, and also getting a sponsorship dinner that we had at Wings Etc.”

Megan Dexter, who took part in the public relations committee, realized the challenges a project like this can have.

“For our group, I think the biggest challenge was designing the logo and reaching out to new people,” Dexter said. “We reached out to the Arrow, so I think that was difficult just because I’ve never done that before, so I didn’t know who to ask.”

Another challenge for Dexter’s group came from finding activities the participants could take part in after the race.

“We had to create a PR event, so we set up a photo booth and that was kind of hard in finding things that people want to do,” Dexter said.

For Crowell, the most challenging part of this experience and for his group was getting people to attend the event.

“Because I felt like we didn’t have enough time to make it where we wanted it to be, so it was a challenge in getting people out here,” Crowell said. “Also we were competing with the weather and the Walk For Women.”

While the event turned out to be a success after a semester of hard work, students such as Dexter are appreciative of the opportunity she took part in.

“It’s actually really helpful that part of the sports management section is making you do real-life things,” Dexter said.