VISION ON SPORT | coco-lili-kvh

A VISION ON SPORT

My Vision on Sport Management

Before I came to study International Sport Management and Business, I thought I knew everything about sport and a lot about management. However, ISMB quickly assured me that I was wrong. … ISMB taught me that there are so many features, positions and jobs that fall under the sport management umbrella. Sport Management goes from dealing with facilities, to being an agent, to being a gym teacher.

ISMB provided me a deeper knowledge of what Sport Management is, and this gave me a wider vision of sport and of management.

Sport is a physical activity and can involve skills, in which individuals or a team compete against others, or do it for fun and health reasons. Sport brings people together.

Management is discipline. Management is people. But management is also planning, organising, leading and controlling. Often people think that management is the same as leading, thought they are two different positions. The difference is that management is about coping with complexity and leadership is about coping with behavior and change.

In my opinion strong leadership is needed to be a good manager, cause if a manager can’t lead a group of people or an organisation, his/her planning, organising and controlling will be worth nothing, as it won’t affect anybody.

My Ideal Sport Organisation

My Sport Hero: Sarah Burke (Professional Freestyle Skier,

†2012)

What is a hero? In my opinion a hero is someone I admire for his/her achievements and outlooks in life.

I admire my hero for her courage, power, enthusiasm, openness, and determination all through her personal life and career.

Sarah Burke started at the age of five with skiing and through her own willpower she worked her way into the freestyle world. Competing against boys was becoming normal for her, which shows her courage and at the age of 17 received her first sponsor. After that she started to compete at the biggest freestyle skiing competitions, and received many medals and titles (e.g. six-timer Winter X Games medalist and winner of the Women’s Ski Superpipe in 2011). Even though she broke many bones and had an amount of surgeries, she never gave up. Besides skiing she had a grand heart, which was portrayed in all the good deeds she was part of. She ran marathons for a good causes; travelled across the world to work with the Women’s Sport Foundation and trained children all through out the whole year and all of these present Sarah’s loyalty, generosity and devotion.

Sarah Burke is my sport hero, as she was a woman who followed her heart, helped others, never quit, pushed her limits to achieve her goals and additionally had an incredible amount of power, love and joy. I quote from the Sarah Burke Foundation site ''Sarah Burke was so much more than just a successful athlete; She was a leader in the sport community, a respected media personality, and an action sports icon. She was also an activist and a philanthropist, who devoted much of her life to helping others'' (Bushfield, Spencer, Schuetz, & Vaughn, 2013).

Albeit that sadly Sarah died in 2012 at the age of 29 when she was training for the Winter X Games of 2012, she is still with me and others. She is still my motivation to never quit even in difficult times and for others through the Sarah Burke Foundation.

My ideal sport organisation would be an organisation that is focused on climbing and the psychological development of children who have experienced a traumatic event. The main focus of the organisation would be climbing with children and through climbing treat them unconsciously. Climbing is a sport of trust, risk and fun. The children who may not be able to trust others anymore, caused by their past experience, now need to trust the material, themselves and others. They will need to cross their boundaries and move out of their comfort zone. Moreover the organisation should have a flat structure, as I like to express my creativity and there should be a safe environment for young professionals, like me to feel comfortable. The organisation should also be multinational, as I like to work with people who have diverse backgrounds. Furthermore the organisation need to have the following values:

Communication, within the company, with the customers and in terms of openness, clarity, frequency and accuracy. Cooperation, as in teamwork amongst individuals, the departments, and our customers (the children and parents). Integrity, respect and loyalty by being truthful, honest and safe with employees, customers and other related people. The need to let people develop, as in the team, the children and the parents. Additionally the values harmony, reliability and a will to succeed, would create my ideal sport organisation. At last I want my work load to be challenging, so that I can develop my strengths and weaknesses and feel satisfied at the end of a working day.