Convincing Your Parents You Are Serious About a Sports Career – Work in Sports e071 - a podcast by Brian Clapp - Work in Sports

Many parents don't take your idea of a sports career seriously - how do you convince them you mean business, and the sports industry is the place to be? We have a strategy for that.

Hi everybody, I’m Brian Clapp Director of Content for WorkinSports.com and this is the WorkinSports podcast…



Let’s get to the good stuff first – shout outs are in order – fan of the show and member of our private facebook group Kelsey Smith accepted an offer to become an inside sales resident with the Tampa Bay Lighting – congrats to Kelsey. She’s a graduate student in the Vinik Sport & Entertainment Management program at the University of South Florida and as part of their program they work with major sports teams and leagues. It’s a very cool program that puts a high emphasis on experience – which I endorse.



Second shout out, this time to Brandon Clemmons another member of our private Facebook group – Brandon just accepted at internship with the Colonnade Group at University of Oklahoma Athletic Hospitality. For those who are not familiar, Colonnade is one of the biggest names in hospitality and event management – they are huge in college sports, almost every power five conference school uses Colonnade to help improve and coordinate game day events and logistics.



If you have a success story you want to share on the show – email me, podcast@workinsports.com – we like good news.



But I am going to transition for a moment, because the news is not all good.



As most if not all of you know there was a terrible tragedy in Western Canada this weekend where 15 members of the Humbolt Broncos junior hockey team were killed when their bus was collided into by a semi-truck carrying a load of peat moss.



I don’t want to get too heavyhearted, but this struck me very hard this weekend and I didn’t want to shy away from what I think makes this podcast very real and honest. The reasons it hit me so hard are many, and I won’t go through them all but I will narrow it to a few.



There is something about that feeling you get, amongst friends, playing sports, competing and sharing in something so pure and special it just can’t be replaced. There are moments in my life that took places on buses just like this one, that have left indelible marks on my brain. I can’t recall what I did this past Halloween but I have an exact visual of the bus rides we used to take to our sports events. There is something special about that lead up, looking around at your teammates and preparing for the next moment.



It feels so wrong, and so unfair and unjustified that these young men on the cusp of so much in their lives, just 16-20 years old from a small community, would have this all stolen from them. It just makes me feels so raw and wretched for them and their families. These bus rides are in theory, the untainted moments in life.



The second reason I want to bring this up is because I want you all to think about how you consume information of all kinds.



We’ve all become guilty of headline reading. Skimming pages for information and moving along. We’ve added speed to our desire to get knowledge – it’s not just information gathering it’s how much and how fast. We don’t really read anymore. We don’t really consume to story. And I think that is sad. I say this as a plea for all stories of all measures of emotions, they deserve to be read and absorbed in to your psyche. The reason we write is to inform and to share, but also to explore emotions.



No matter how difficult it may be to read stories like this, I implore you to do so, to read the quotes,

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