This past weekend, a small group from one of my classes volunteered in Fort Wayne at a Power Soccer Tournament. The group consisted of 8 people, including my professor. All of us volunteered on Sunday, but one of my friends and I also volunteered on Saturday.

Despite having to be at the fieldhouse at 9:30am on Saturday and 8:30am on Sunday, it was worth the lack of sleep. Basically, the tournament was for those in power wheelchairs who wanted to play soccer. Before the players came onto the court, metal racks were bolted onto the wheelchair which is what they used to hit the ball. Watching them play was pretty exciting because I had never seen anything like it before. It was like a real soccer game, too. They had referees, flaggers, scorekeepers, coaches, and some teams had plays to run! There were also these people who sat behind the goals called ball runners; that’s what I volunteered for.

I sat behind the goal and whenever a ball was hit away from the court I had to run it down and bring it back to the court. The picture above shows you my view for a total of 6 hours for the weekend. You can see the referee and the racks the players used to hit the ball. Although I had to do some sprints when chasing down balls, I also had one of the better views of the game.

I believe this volunteer experience was a the first of many I’ll be doing in college. This is a part of facility/event management and it goes right along with what I’m majoring in, so just being there and looking around will help me get ideas for when I have to do something like this. And on top of everything that happened, my professor bought the volunteers Buffalo Wilds Wings, so you can guarantee we were happy about that!! Overall, of course I didn’t want to wake up that early and volunteer, but it ended up being really enjoyable (and getting unexpected free food is always a positive).

Nick Rush ’20 is studying Sports Management and plans on minoring in another business area. He plays baseball for MU, and he plans on working in the sports industry after graduation.