Week of 6/4- 6/8

Blog: Week of 6/4-6/8

Hours:
Monday: 12:45-4:45
Tuesday: 12:45-5:00
Wednesday: 12:50-5:20
Thursday: 1:00-4:15
Friday: 12:45-4:45
Total: 20 hours

Monday
I spent most of Monday gathering the final quota requests that were sent in for the tournament. Much of my day was spent working on the excel workbook organizing information and totaling the requested number of Athletes. In addition, I spent part of the day emailing the contacts on the quota requests I received when on Monday to confirm the number of athletes they requested. Our total number of athletes after I received the last of the quota requests was 303. The rest of the day I spent working on the event handbook to be sent to the coaches of the athletes coming to the tournament. I seem to have come to a bit of a standstill with this project; there are a lot of things I cannot update until my supervisor gets some of the information necessary to do so. In addition, I have had some trouble getting in contact with people involved with the tournament in Port St. Lucie. I have had some questions about information I need to put in the event handbook and volunteer handbooks, and have not yet received a response from these individuals. For example, I emailed a gentleman from the Resort to double-check the yardages for the holes, and have not received a response yet.

Tuesday
I spent the first part of my day Tuesday working on the event handbook for the tournament while my supervisor made finished up a little work on the tournament. I later met with my supervisor to discuss the quota requests. We discussed which states had responded to the requests. Specifically, which ones were coming, which ones were not, and which states had not responded at all. We determined that if they had not yet responded, they were most likely not going to respond. We have 25 states who confirmed they are coming, and 10 who confirmed they are not. There were several states that sent nothing in, so we assumed that they would not be attending. After double-checking all the numbers, we determined that we would have to cut quota for the event.
The athletes are split into 5 Levels, Level 1 being a skills competition, Level 2 being a 9-hole partner competition, Level 3 being an 18-hole partner competition, Level 4 being 9-hole individual play, and Level 5 being 18-hole individual play. Most of the athletes compete at the Levels 2 & 3 competition. In this case we had 168 golfers at level 2; 84 athletes and 84 partners, which means that we have 84 teams signed up to compete at Level 2. We decided that we would most likely need to cut quota by about 50 athletes in the Level 2 group. All of the other groups were substantially smaller than level 2, and we don’t think there will be any problems finding tee times for all of them.
I spent the rest of the day updating the event handbook, which I am still waiting to receive some updated information on.



Wednesday
I spent the first part of my day Wednesday working on the Event handbook using. I am still at a bit of a standstill with that, I have not yet gotten all of the information I need. My supervisor gave me a couple of other things to do including contacting the Hilton Garden Inn at the Golf Club about getting a deal on price for the families who are attending the event. In addition, I worked on developing a template for coaching certificates within Special Olympics. That is what I spent most of my day working on Wednesday. My Supervisor and I began batting around ideas for my internship project. We discussed that I be responsible for developing the handbooks and paperwork for the event, in addition doing a thorough event evaluation. The evaluation will help with the event in the future. It will help identify problems we had with this year’s event, in the hope that these problems can be avoided in the future. We also discussed my schedule when Summer School is over, which is still to be determined.

Thursday
I spent a good portion of Thursday looking for a specific document that my supervisor could not locate. It pertained to the grant we receive from the USGA for the tournament. I looked through a lot of files, but was unable to find it. I then searched a CD my supervisor gave me and was unable to find it on the disk either. I also spent a little more time on the template for the coaching certificate. Later I made a phone call to the Hilton Garden Inn about pricing on rooms for the event. I was unable to get in contact with the person I was supposed to call, so I left her a message, and called the front desk to get an email for her. I then sent her an email explaining the situation, and that we had spoken with People at the PGA Golf Club, and that they suggested we contact her about getting a deal on the rooms for the families of athletes who are attending the event. I am still waiting to hear back from her as she will not be back in the office until Monday. We spoke with a gentleman from the PGA Golf Club today, so I should be able to put some of the finishing touches on the event handbook.

Friday
The beginning of my day was spent finishing the coaching certificate. I met with my boss about the budget for the tournament, and we discussed what exactly we thought we would have to spend money on. We compared our budget to that of years prior, and used those as a basis to prepare ours. I discussed the registration packet with my supervisor, and, I almost completely finished it, I have a few things to correct, and one more addition to make, and it will be done, and we will be able to send it out to the attending teams. I am still waiting to get some information so I can update the Volunteer handbook and the Event handbook. My advisor and I discussed my internship project a little further, and we determined that I will do some sort of event evaluation to determine what worked well with the tournament, and what could have been done better during the tournament, to avoid problems of the same type in the future.

Evaluation: We made a lot of progress this week, even though at times it seemed as though there was not a lot for me to do. We have had trouble completing a lot of work because of problems with communication with people working with the tournament. On more than one occasion we have sent emails and made phone calls only to receive no response from the people we need to speak with. We hope that after this week, everyone may have a slightly more open schedule, and we be more capable of speaking with us.

I spent much of my time with the computer this week, working predominantly with Powerpoint and Microsoft Word.

I got a little bit of experience communicating with other people involved with the tournament through phone calls and emails this week. it helps me familiarize with the people that I am going to have to work with throughout the process of preparing for the tournament. I am directly responsible for many of the aspects of planning of the event, and contacting people to make arrangements.

Honestly, I was a little frustrated this week with the way things seem to be going right now. We have had a lot of difficulty getting people to respond to emails and phone calls, and it is beginning to slow our process a little. Thankfully, we are still early in the process of planning the tournament, and we are not running too far behind.

This week, we nearly completed the Registration packet, however, I did not finish the Event handbook as I had hoped, because as I mentioned before, we have had difficulty getting in contact with people who could give us some information we need to finish. Hopefully, this coming week I will finish the Event Handbook, however, most of this work will be done from home, due to the fact that no one will be in the office this week after Monday.

In order to finish the event handbook, my supervisor and I will need to make even further efforts to contact individuals working with the tournament.

Internship Project
My supervisor and I discussed it this week, and we decided that my project will pertain to an event evaluation. It will help with the tournament in the future, and will prevent problems of the same sort in the future. In addition, I am responsible for putting together all of the paperwork for the tournament, including the registration packet, volunteer handbook, and event handbook.

Internship: Wild Dunes, Charleston, SC

I began doing shadowing experiences at Wild Dunes. My first shadowing experience was in the gym and Spa at Wild Dunes. These experiences allowed me to see how individual departments within the resort function in relation to the resort as a whole. I discovered that most of the departments function in similar ways, as far as keeping track of sales and reporting them to the accounting department. All departments have to take into account whether or not the guest is an owner at Wild Dunes, a guest staying at the resort, or a guest renting a property on the resort, but through another property managment company. Each individual is charged differently according to what type of guest they are. Obviously, owners and guests are given preferential treatment to individuals renting through another company. Individuals renting through another company have to pay to use practically every amenity on the resort property, whereas owners and guests us them free of charge. In addition, they have to pay higher prices for certain services at the resort, like varioius spa treatments. Each department has a unique way of recording appointments and reservations, but generally, we all use the same Point of Sale system, and similar ways of reporting sales to the accounting department.