LEXINGTON, Ky. (LEX 18) — Inside the brand-new Central Bank Center at Rupp Arena, we witnessed a brand-new event that its creators hope will evolve into an annual gathering.
The first ever Kentucky Sports Industry Conference welcomed some of the biggest names and organizations in the sports world in hopes of getting University of Kentucky students a little closer to realizing their dreams of working in the industry.
“I realized UK doesn’t have a sports-focused undergraduate major, said Neima Moaven, one of the event’s organizers and a UK student from Colorado.
Neima teamed up with fellow student, Drew Rodriguez and together they worked to make today’s all-day symposium a reality. Students got to hear from industry leaders about their respective areas of expertise, while taking part in small group discussions, which allowed them to ask questions, and “press some flesh.”
“They got to learn from the biggest names in sports. And they got to make handshake connections with companies, regionally and nationally that could be their future employer,” Rodriguez said.
I watched as students did just that with Chad Sanders, a former student/manager for the UK Men’s basketball team. Now, he is the General Manager of the Toronto Raptors’ G-League team, recently being named league Executive of the Year. He was so good in his role as student/manager that Calipari placed a call to the Raptors without Chad’s knowledge.
“I did not ask him to call, and when I found out afterwards that he called I thought that’s pretty cool. The years of hard work you put in, sometimes that pays off,” Sanders said, after spending abut twenty minutes talking with students and offering advice on how they can break into the industry. It appeared as if he even shared his phone number with a few of them.
That’s precisely what Neima and Drew had hoped would come from today.
“It’s all about access and opportunity. From that, what do you make of it,” Calipari said.
Calipari told several stories ranging from having seen Aaron Judge hit his 60th home run of the season last month (stressing that he is a team-first player), to his time as a volunteer assistant coach at Kansas, where Calipari had to serve food to the student/athletes to make ends meet. He told the kids not to be afraid of failure, and to expect to make mistakes along the way. Calipari had a late flight that didn’t get him home until 1 am, but he wasn’t going to miss this.
“This was student driven, and they’ve worked at it, so that’s why I came. I said, ‘you know what, I’m going to make time for this,’” the coach said.
He didn’t shortchange them of time either. There were a few times when the moderator had to tell him the session was over, but Coach Cal kept going!
Both Neima and Drew hope the interest generated in today’s program, which also included representatives from ESPN, Keeneland, The Breeders’ Cup and Jessica Holtz, the player agent to former Wildcats Karl Anthony Towns and Devin Booker, will lead the university to consider adding a sports-focused major program at some point in the future.
“The College of Information and Communications has started a sports communications and journalism track, and we’re really hoping to promote that and to really grow that, and increase other opportunities in the sports industry at UK,” Rodriguez said.
In the meantime, they plan on welcoming everyone back for this conference in 2023.
