Hi everyone!
My name is Julia Hernandez, I'm a senior studying Sport Industry and Spanish from the Los Angeles area. As a graduating senior, I'm spending a lot of time these days looking back on my four incredible years here at Ohio State, as well as what actually brought me here, which is a question I get every single time I say that I'm from L.A. so I've had a pretty rehearsed answer for four years; that answer is that I grew up a Buckeye from the day I was born. My mom grew up in Upper Arlington, and her parents are from Upper Arlington and Bexley, so there was really no decision in being a Buckeye fan or not. My dad is from about 20 minutes from where I live in L.A., but because he went to a community college and then a small commuter college, he didn't really have any die hard affiliation for college sport until he met my mom. I wanted to get away from L.A. for college; my high school sends more students annually to USC than any high school in the nation, so going there is like staying in high school for another 4-6 years which just isn't what I wanted, so I went 2,200 miles away and bought my first winter coat.
I came to OSU as a political science major on the pre-law track and quickly realized I couldn't stand most of the people in the fields I thought I was interested in, so after some soul searching, I chose Sport Industry. This past summer I interned in the Promotional Events Department of the Cincinnati Reds and I came to the conclusion that if my first year working in baseball was with a team that lost over 70% of the games they played and had over 27 hours of rain delays just at home, and despite that, I loved every day I got to work a game or an event, that I had found my calling. I'm looking forward to pursuing a career in baseball operations (think scouts, analysts, general managers, team presidents, etc.) and maybe one day becoming a general manager.
During my sophomore year here at Ohio State, I was the Block O Baseball Director. I was in charge of the student section for the OSU baseball games and events to drive up attendance at games. As an executive board, we came up with an event that featured multiple varsity teams over the course of the event, each team having activities to involve the participants with the student-athletes. I not only worked work with the Block O executive board members to create the baseball activity and make sure it was cohesive with the other activities being planned, I collaborated with the baseball coach and team to find things they would want to do, and were allowed to do. The portion of the event I planned was at Bill Davis Stadium, where the Buckeyes play, and extended from their indoor batting cages, their bullpen, and across the entire field, with five different activities for students to participate in. As participants were batting, pitching and being clocked, doing basic fielding drills, running the bases, and doing O-H-I-O pictures and videos around the stadium, I was managing all of the students, student-athletes and coaching staff present at the event, as well as my committee members who were also looking after portions of the event and helping combat any foreseeable issues that might arise with the volume of participants coming through the limited space and time we had. Over the course of an hour and a half we had over a hundred students come through and participate, and by the end of the night, it was clear that the baseball team was a complete success. This event and the planning and managing skills that I gained from it, along with the entire experience of running that section, have really stuck with me, and were a huge part in deciding what kind of career I want to pursue.
