Personal Contributions- Connor Roswech

Another area in which I contributed this summer was travel preparation for the 2021-2022 season. I felt like I made a big impact in this area and took a lot off my supervisor’s plate as we prepare for the upcoming season. I am already very involved in our road trips, as I am in constant contact with restaurant, airport, hotel, and arena staff about our schedule and all of our needs. This is an area in which I have a lot of experience in, as I have been all over the country with the team these past three seasons. However, this summer my boss definitely increased my role in this field. I was now tasked with compiling a list of at least three different full service Marriott hotels for each location we would be staying in. For each hotel, I had to research how far it would be from the arena we will be playing in, and from the airport we will fly into. For some locations, such as Cedar Falls, Iowa, (where we will be playing University of Northern Iowa) there are no full service Marriott’s in town, so I had to reach out to a local catering company and see if they could accommodate all of our meals. After doing some research on potential hotels we could stay at, I then got to work on looking at private FBOs we could fly into. This part was a little more tricky, as some FBOs are accommodated at the city’s major airports, but other FBOs are set at their own location. For the FBOs, it is also critical to consider how far they are from the hotel. We usually don’t land until late at night, and after a long day of classes and practice, the players and coaches want to get to their hotel rooms as soon as possible. We want to avoid long bus rides after the flight as much as possible, so it is important to balance all distances between the hotel, airport, and arena. In September, I will begin contacting the FBOs, getting quotes on our charter flights, and discussing with our Marriott representative the rates they can offer us. In November, we will be playing in a multi team event/ tournament in the Bahamas. There is a lot of travel preparation that goes into a four-to-five-day trip like this; my boss Will and I have sat through multiple conference calls with the organization hosting the tournament. We went over possible COVID protocols, team meals, transportation, practice times, laundry sites, and air travel, just to name a few. Assisting in this area may have been the most involved I have felt working with the program as I really felt that I am directly contributing to a large scale, very important project.