A little over 25 years ago, I walked into what was the old Sports Foundation headquarters located in the former Valero office off Callahan and I-10.
While there are too many people to acknowledge for our 40 years of success, Bill Greehey literally helped keep the lights on by offering free office space during our early years.
I had two interviews that day. One was to work under Vanessa Richey Said, who oversaw our Community Olympic Development Program for the city; the second was to support Bill Hanson’s efforts to win a USA domestic bid to bring the 2007 Pan American Games to San Antonio.
As a former Olympic Trials athlete, NCAA All-American swimmer and future San Antonio Sports Hall of Fame inductee, Vanessa was very intimidating to me during my interview. Bill was the second father I didn’t know I needed at the time, so I went with the path of least resistance knowing that San Antonio Sports was going to hire me either way as an unpaid college intern.
A few weeks later I reported to our former Volunteer Manager, Nancy Christensen, who to this day is one of my favorite people ever associated with our organization. She put me to work assembling bid books for the Pan Am Games effort. I had no idea what I was doing and overnight I was being thrown into other projects, making phone calls and setting up events.
The short story is…. we lost the Pan Am Games bid to Rio de Janeiro who needed to check 2007 off their list before ultimately winning the 2016 Olympic Games. In hindsight, San Antonio was the real victor for NOT winning that day.
Had we been awarded that event, it likely would have bankrupted our fledgling nonprofit and any future partnership with the City of San Antonio. It also helped instigate state legislation that led to what is currently called the Texas Events Trust Fund. What was originally intended to be a funding mechanism for the Pan Am Games has led to an economic development program that has helped secure numerous Super Bowls, Final Fours, professional All-Star Game weekends, College Football Playoff rounds and more. There were only a handful of us who weren’t in Mexico City for the final presentation on that fateful day in 2002. Wendy McCauley Brand and I helped host the local party during a live announcement and we swallowed our tears in front of media cameras, trying to be as positive as we could in the moment.
Wendy hired me shortly after my internship ended to join her 2002 NCAA Women’s Final Four staff after everyone at San Antonio Sports realized I wasn’t going away. We set an attendance record for the NCAA that still stands to this day (29,619) that will be broken before I retire due to the growth of NCAA women’s basketball.
After 25 years on the job at San Antonio Sports, I’ve done intern tasks you can’t imagine, worked too many 100-hour weeks for months straight, licked thousands of envelopes when we used to put things in the mail, set up 45 basketball hoops for a one-day tournament and everything in between. And I would do it all over again.
If you know me, you know my love and passion for sports, but that’s not why I’m still here. Knowing I have a small part in changing a child’s life, creating healthy changes for a family, providing a neighborhood park to utilize for a step-goal in the evening, and bringing major events that create huge economic impact and development for this city I love…. that’s why I get up every morning. And of course, the people that have been associated with San Antonio Sports: Dr. Susan Blackwood for seeing something in me long before I did, volunteers, board members, staff, and local and national partners. While there are far too many to recognize, you know who you are that have impacted my career.
Thank you for allowing me to serve this community and our organization for 25 years.
Game On!