My name is Journey Gunderson. Four years ago I graduated with a class of just 70 students from a small public high school in rural western New York. Now I am a senior sport media major/legal studies minor here at Ithaca College and online media editor for the Women’s Sports Foundation. My internship with the Women’s Sports Foundation has been one of the most valuable experiences of my life.
GETTING STARTED: Most sport media majors do their required six-credit internship sometime over the course of their junior and senior years at Ithaca, whether it’s over the summer or during a semester. By that time in my college education I was still unsure about an exact career path, but had come to know what I liked and disliked. Coming in, I knew I had a strong interest in sports. For my one-credit fieldwork requirement, I had worked at Cornell University helping with athletic events and facilities management. I learned a lot from this experience, including the fact that I probably did not want to pursue a future as a sports information director or work in athletic event management. Nonetheless, it was a great experience. Through both the required and elective courses I took at Ithaca, I realized I had interests in gender studies, law, and communications. I told my adviser, Ellen Staurowsky, exactly that. She made some suggestions, including the Women’s Sports Foundation, and I did some research.
WHAT IS THE WSF? Founded in 1974 by tennis legend Billie Jean King, the Women's Sports Foundation is a charitable educational organization dedicated to ensuring equal access to participation and leadership opportunities for all girls and women in sports and fitness. This was right up my alley.
WHAT I DID: I looked into the internship program and read the descriptions of the positions available. I completed the application process, including developing a personal resume for the first time. While I was waiting to hear back about my application, my adviser arranged for me to meet with Becky Lane, online media producer for the WSF, who actually lives in Ithaca and is in charge of the foundation’s extensive website. She reviewed my application and we designed a sort of externship position where I could work in Ithaca with her, occasionally traveling to the foundation on Long Island. I was now a member of the WSF Web team.
My weekly responsibilities included compiling and posting online news and television listings for women’s sports. Each week I surfed the Web for the latest news in the women’s sports world. I would send in the top headlines to another intern, who included them in the foundation’s weekly newsletter. I then wrote a summary of each story and posted them on the Women’s Sports in the News page of the website. For each story I also created links to full-text articles on the Web where more information could be found.
For the Women’s Sports on TV page, I researched television listings of several sources, including TV Guide, ESPN, and CollegeSportsTV, and assembled a weekly schedule of all women’s sports programming on television. This included everything from an LPGA Tour event to a showing of A League of Their Own.
Other responsibilities included editing and writing up articles for our home page, finding and formatting images and photographs for areas of the site, researching and interviewing athletes, and working at the 2003 Annual Salute to Women in Sports awards dinner in New York City. I was able to travel to the city a few times for internal department meetings and meetings with outside companies such as Mediopolis, the firm that hosts and maintains our website capabilities. This was a good taste of real-world professionalism and business conduct for me.
THE BIG EVENT: The Annual Salute to Women in Sports awards dinner was by far the highlight of my experience. Don’t miss these pictures! Each October, the Women’s Sports Foundation gathers the most decorated female athletes together with celebrities from film and television to celebrate the achievements of women in sports and highlight the best individual and team performances of the year. Months and months of preparation and planning go into this event -- our biggest fundraiser and highest-profile opportunity as an organization -- which finally all comes together at the Waldorf-Astoria in Manhattan.
Leading up to the New York awards dinner, I was assigned to conduct two athlete interviews and one roundtable discussion during the day of the dinner. After much research and preparation, I had the privilege of interviewing Kate Skarratt, one of the top female professional surfers in the world. This Australian also played a role in the movie Blue Crush as both an actor and a stuntperson. I also got the chance to interview 17-year-old sprinting phenom Allyson Felix. She has been called the "next Marion Jones" and the "Lebron James of track and field," and will likely be seen in this summer’s Olympic Games in Athens. The last of my interviews was a very special opportunity for me, as I was designated to lead a sort of discussion between the only three women ever to race the Indianapolis 500, together in the same room for the first time: Janet Guthrie, Lynn St. James, and Sarah Fisher.
Besides these interviews and miscellaneous tasks, other responsibilities I was happy to take on were the gathering of brief video clips of athletes’ inspirational tidbits and also kneeling right down in front of the stage to film the actual acceptance speeches of award recipients. I found myself asking the likes of Oksana Baiul and Lisa Leslie for moments of their time to say something to the camera, and kneeling next to tables where Julie Foudy and Nancy Lopez were seated while I filmed Billie Jean King, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Bill Cosby, and so many more just 15 feet in front of me. Talk about the experience of a lifetime.
WHAT NOW? This internship experience could not have been better for me. Not only has it left me with great memories, but I was able to develop career contacts with several important people, create a relationship with a fantastic organization that would possibly hire me in the future, and gain knowledge and experience one cannot get in a classroom. I have learned that I would like to continue doing work for an organization like the WSF, perhaps by pursuing a law degree first and working for a cause I believe in. This internship went as well as it did largely because of the preparation I got as an sport media major/law minor at Ithaca College. The education I received provided me with at least a basic background in the areas of writing, marketing, computers and Web design, sport sciences including gender issues and social aspects, public relations, broadcast production, legal issues including Title IX, and more. So many of the skills I developed in my courses were a significant help to me throughout my internship. This internship placement proved to be a perfect fit, and I encourage every student to try to find an internship experience that suits their interests as well as this did mine.
