US Canoe/Kayak at the Olympic Training Center

Hi SMBA V Blog Reader, 

As you are probably aware, one of the reasons that San Diego is such a spectacular place to get your Sports MBA is that there are about a bazillion-and-a-half sports organizations based in the area.  As you may not be aware, among these bazillion-and-a-half organizations is the ARCO Olympic Training Center (http://www.usoc.org/content/index/1375), located in just to the southeast of San Diego proper in Chula Vista. 

The OTC is just what it sounds like—a training center used by many United States Olympic sports’ national governing bodies as either a permanent home base or temporary training camp site for their athletes.  It’s even cooler than it sounds—with about 100 full-time athlete residents in nine Olympic sports; a complete physical therapy, sports psychology, and strength and conditioning staff; the AT&T athlete lounge; a full-service dining hall serving three squares a day; and an absolutely beautiful campus including practice facilities for sports that I didn’t even know were a part of the Olympics (BMX?!?  Field Hockey?!?), it is, essentially, summer camp for aspiring Olympic athletes. 

Early on during the semester, USA Canoe/Kayak’s head sprint kayak coach, Nathan Luce, came and talked to us before class one morning about some internship opportunities available with USACK out at the OTC.  I have a pretty substantial interest in Olympic sports, so I took Coach Luce up on his offer.  Since then I’ve been heading out to the OTC every Friday to sit in on some meetings, do some administrative work like creating payment schedules for their upcoming World Cup trip, and to just generally be the Lewis Black (picking up things when they fall through the cracks) to Nathan’s Jon Stewart. 

The last weekend in April was a big weekend for Nathan and all his paddlers, as it was the weekend of their Sprint World Cup Team Trials.  It was also a big weekend for me, as not only was I out at the OTC pretty much all day on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday assisting with the volunteer coordinating, liaising with USADA to make sure that they had the necessary volunteers at the times the needed them, and filling my traditional Lewis Black role, but I also had the finals and final papers for our first round of classes due Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of next week.

Overall, the weekend was a huge success.  The weather was beautiful (as it usually is in these parts), the Trials ran smoothly (the highlight of the weekend was definitely OTC resident athlete and all-around good guy Morgan House’s four [!!!] victories), and I met some really great people from the national USACK office and USADA as well as a bunch of former Canoe/Kayak Olympians who are still involved in the sport in various capacities.  (And, somehow, I still managed to get all my finals done on and turned-in on time—success, indeed!)

Okay, future SMBA 2011 members, that’s all I’ve got for you now.  See you out here next January! 

Best,

Eli Asch, SMBA 2010