Major league intern
Student Mark Bowman spends his summer with MLS team
Liberty student Mark Bowman is entering his senior year and is two semesters away from graduating with a sports management degree. As he prepares to graduate, he had the opportunity to get valuable experience in his preferred job field.
FINISH LINE — Mark Bowman will graduate in May 2015. Photo credit: Ash Brownd
Bowman spent this past summer interning for Major League Soccer (MLS) team Sporting KC. Sporting KC is a professional soccer team based out of Kansas City. In 1995, they were announced to be one of the first 10 MLS teams, only two years after the league’s formation, according to sportingkc.com. Bowman said the team has invested more than $200 million in a brand new stadium. Bowman also said the U.S. Men’s National team practice facility will be moving to Kansas City in 2016, which he said will aid the city in developing a reputation as a “soccer town.”
“They’ve nicknamed themselves as the ‘soccer capital of America,’” Bowman said. “And it’s true.”
Sporting KC is also home to players Graham Zusi and Matt Besler, who spent the summer playing with the U.S. Men’s National Team in the FIFA World Cup.
Bowman considered it a blessing to be able to do something he loved with an organization that contributes so much to the sports.
Just as the 2014 spring semester came to a close, Bowman loaded up his car and drove approximately 20 hours from his home in Pennsylvania to his new, temporary home in Kansas.
Bowman worked with the youth development department under Sporting Club Network.
“(Sporting Club Network) works somewhat with youth academies,” Bowman said. “We have set up a network that any club in the Midwest can join.”
Local athletic clubs had plenty incentive to join as joining came with a series of perks, such as meeting a Sporting KC player or even practicing with them. Bowman worked with managing these perks and making sure the right team received the right benefit. Bowman was also responsible for running a soccer skills clinic.
“A clinic is a 90-minute session,” Bowman said. “We have 60 minutes for drills. We’ll do a 15-minute warm-up and then rotate them through four or five different stations. … They will spend eight to 10 minutes at one station, and then they move as a group to the next station.”
Bowman also said that the final 30 minutes were dedicated to autographs and photos with the kids and players.
Along with that, Bowman was also responsible for orchestrating an important moment for teams that joined the Sporting Club Network. Certain teams were eligible to take a team picture on the sideline during a Sporting KC game. There were instances when there were so many teams, that if the process had not been done properly, some fans may not have been able to take their pictures within the allotted time slot. Through’s Bowman’s work, the teams were able to take pictures without a
single mishap.
Bowman’s final, major task with the organization was a coaching seminar called “Chalk Talk.” This gave club-member coaches the opportunity to watch a professional coach as he managed and prepared for the upcoming match.
“This event was basically five days of coaching education at our training facilities,” Bowman said. “Throughout the summer, Bowman caught a glimpse of a professional environment. He said he fully intends to maintain the values he learned while in Kansas and use them to get him to where he wants to go.
“I want to start a soccer academy overseas,” Bowman said. “It will be working with youth clubs, kind of like how we did at Sporting Club Network. It gave me ideas on how I can incorporate and find local youth in the area, and how I can make my program more attractive to them.”
Bowman hopes to return to Kansas City after graduating.
“Ideally, I would love to be back in Kansas City,” Bowman said. “But, if the Lord calls me somewhere else, then that’s where I’ll go. He’s prepared me for whatever he has in front of me. I’m really excited to see where the Lord takes it.”