My recent summer internship as an entertainment and promotions intern with Fans First Entertainment, the company that owns the Savannah Bananas baseball team, was truly one of the most impactful experiences of my life.
The UF Department of Sport Management played a big role in me getting the internship, navigating the experience and now having new applicants express their interest to me.
I first started my internship search in my Sport Career Preparation class with Dr. Emily Plunkett, where I learned how to find the right internships and opportunities for me, and how to tailor my resume and experience to those opportunities. The Bananas job is one that I happened to randomly find on LinkedIn, but since I found it in the midst of finals season and had some time to apply, I told myself I would apply once I was done with my exams.
Pro Tip No. 1: Don’t do that! The application process is long and time-consuming, with eight essay questions and a video just to actually apply. It took me about three days, with breaks of course, to finish the application, so I would definitely recommend starting it early.
After I got past the application, there were three rounds of interviews with more difficult and time-consuming activities in each round, but I would recommend really having fun with them and trying to develop some creative, out-of-the-box ideas, as crazy as that sounds.
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On to the actual internship, I wish I could tell you how a typical day or week could work, but I think a game day is much better. Throughout the internship, I traveled to 12 cities in 12 weeks, which included some meccas of baseball like Camden Yards, Busch Stadium and Coors Field in my hometown of Denver, Colorado. I also went to some lesser-known but equally incredible cities like Grand Rapids, Michigan; Salem, Virginia; and Allentown, Pennsylvania.
I was able to work in Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, North Carolina, which was one of the most insane things I have ever done. A typical game day would start with a morning promo meeting, where we would go over the pregame and mid-inning promotions, and then we would get everything ready for game time. My job typically would be managing our CO2 tanks, rolling them from the loading deck to the field, installing them and testing them, as well as helping with anything else needed for the game.
Games would actually start around four to five hours before game time, with our pregame plaza party, Before the Peel, where we would sing, dance and play games to get the fans ready before the gates opened. As soon as those gates opened, it was showtime, and my job became much more time-intensive.
I would go up into the crowd and find participants for our pregame and in-game promotions, gather their information, bring them down into the dugout and coach them on how to perform well on the field. These game days truly taught me the importance of hard work and attention to detail, as picking the wrong contestants could ruin the promotion, and not being fast with those selections could cause promotions to need to be moved and worked around.
One of my favorite promotions that I ran, which I also created, was called “Four Corners Faceoff” for our Denver series. The premise of the game was simple: four bases, four yoga balls with one state of the four corners, four people, and they would run at each other until they jumped and hit each other on the pitcher’s mound.
Luckily, to the delight of the hometown crowd, Colorado won, and to my surprise, that promotion was live on ESPN2 for millions of people! That realization showed how much of a cultural impact the Bananas truly have, and the fact that I was able to play a small role in that is nothing short of incredible.
What this internship did for me in terms of my future career journey is that it showed me what I truly love. I love making people happy, and I love delivering an experience that people can look back at and say, “I loved that!” The internship also taught me the importance of relationships and communication, and that showing up every day ready to learn is one of the best things you can do.
My best advice for UF students who will be participating in internships like mine in the near future is a guiding principle of Fans First Entertainment: Be Where Your Feet Are. You only get to live this life once, and opportunities like these don’t come around very often for most people, so enjoy it. And if it ends up not being what you love, that’s OK; that’s why it’s an internship. But embrace every moment and every decision you make, because it will make your experience and your future that much better.
Carson Duke is a junior sport management and business administration double major from Denver, Colorado, and one of the biggest Gator fans you will meet. He currently works with the University Athletic Association as a Blueshirt Marketing Intern and with Gators Sports Properties as a property assistant.