Today I went to practice again and I was almost very close to not arriving there on time because I woke up a bit late. Dad and I were able to hustle out of the house and get him to work and me to practice on time.
Before practice I talked with Minh, Omar and Eric (another intern) about what kind of work they do with the team. Along with Dakota, they are part of the Predator’s Player Personal Department. One of the coaches, Sean Coen, is the head of the department and he has the interns calling up players, teams in other professional football leagues and agents asking about players statuses and if they would be interested in either having a tryout or signing with the team. It’s very interesting and cool! These things are what GMs in the NFL do, so I really wanted to get involved with this. I talked to Sean before practice and he said that if I was interested in being a part of the player personal team to talk to him after practice. I was definitely very interested to talk to him.
Practice was pretty simple, it wasn’t as difficult as yesterday’s was because I had learned about the in and outs of practice and today they practiced without pads. Yesterday they practiced with pads. Practice is typically a lot harder and rougher when the players practice with pads because they can hit each other and get physical. Without pads, they really can’t be all that physical. I did the same thing as yesterday in practice, caught balls as they went out of bounds dried them off and then toss them back to Pat, the equipment manager.
After practice while we were waiting for lunch to arrive the players broke off into groups and watched film of practice and game film of the other team to prepare them for this week’s game. I sat and ran the film footage for the quarterback and wide receiver film group while Sean talked with the players about the film. It was very cool being in there!
After lunch arrived and everyone had eaten, I talked with Sean about being on the personal team and he told me that it was very serious work and I have to put a lot of effort into it. I told him that I was definitely prepared to do so. He then told me that I would be probably working with Omar on player personal and that I could start after this week’s game!
Later that day I went to the office and worked with everyone to prepare for gameday. People were calling wanting to buy tickets, bring in vouchers and try to get better seats for the game. It was pretty hectic. My day there was pretty much the same as it always is, I answer phones, talk to and help out customers and go run errands. All in all, my day was pretty low key.