No better way to get MBA than working sports

PAINESVILLE -- Last year, Brittney Murphy was a senior at Capital University, working as a student assistant in the school's sports information office.
This year, she is the sports information director at Lake Erie College in Painesville.
"The position is a graduate assistant," said Murphy, a graduate of Hubbard High (2001) and Capital (2005) who is in a two-year program at Lake Erie.
"I am working on my [master's degree in business administration] and working in the athletic office as the sports information director full-time, and they pay for my grad school."
She is one of four graduate assistants at Lake Erie working under the current two-year program. The others are Micky McManus (assistant soccer coach), Alyssa Rickert (assistant women's basketball coach) and Scott Fremont (sports marketing director).
All of the graduate assistants are paid on an hourly basis by the college while getting free tuition for their MBA studies at the school and receiving valuable work experience that will help them with future employment.
May apply for NCAA grant
Murphy said that Lake Erie is trying to get financial assistance to underwrite the graduate-assistant program from the NCAA.
"The NCAA puts out a certain number of graduate assistants [funding] each year in sports information for schools with restricted budgets. It might be considered an internship," she said.
Each grant would be a stipend to pay wages for a graduate assistant.
Murphy said she is learning by leaps and bounds at Lake Erie and gaining confidence in her self-direction, abilities and decisions.
Although she worked in the Capital sports information office for two years, she basically was working under supervisors and just doing jobs assigned to her.
But now, "I am basically running my own sports information office. I am doing everything. I am learning so much by just having to do it. If I don't do it, then it won't get done," said Murphy, who has had to solve new challenges and learn new jobs as they cropped up.
"When you jump in the water, you have to swim and I have [had] to learn how to do things," said Murphy, who has come a long way learning the business of sports in a short time.
Learned about opportunities
"When I was an undergraduate at Capital, I didn't even know that sports information existed. I was working for the school newspaper and I happened to talk to the SID about something, and that's how I learned about it," she recalled.
Later, she learned about the opening for a graduate assistant at Lake Erie while a senior at Capital.
"Our baseball team was playing the Lake Erie baseball team. Ken Krsolovic, the head baseball coach at Lake Erie, also happens to be the AD at Lake Erie. My SID at Capital, Lenny Reich, and I were talking before the game. He said that he knew Ken was hiring a GA for next year and I talked to him after the game," recalled Murphy.
Hopes to capitalize on job
Murphy is hoping to use Lake Erie's program to climb the ladder in collegiate sports administration and perhaps even to work toward a doctorate.
"I want to stay somewhere in athletics administration. I enjoy sports information but college athletics is a place on the rise. The only way you can go is up," said Murphy, the daughter of Ron and Michele Murphy.
Murphy earned a bachelor of arts degree with majors in public relations and advertising, with minors in journalism and literature, at Capital.
While at Hubbard High, she played two years of softball for coaches Tamara Sinn and Kenny Miller.
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