Have you ever wondered what the world was like with no phones? How do you communicate with people? How do you find a map to get somewhere? However, the most important feature would be the weather. How do you know if it's going to rain when you're taking your boat out? This is probably one of the most important features of the iPhone for people living in Minnesota. When the power goes out and there's no electricity for days, but you live in the land of 10,000 lakes. What do you do? Well, you go boating. And when you have no way to figure out the weather. What do you use? Well, you use coconut on a string. If the coconut is hot, it's sunny out. If the count is swaying, it's probably windy. If the coconut is wet, it's raining. If the coconut is cool, it's cloudy. If the coconut is frozen, it's cold. If the coconut is gone, there's a tornado. But the most important of all, if the coconut is gone, run. It's quite simple for people living in Minnesota. It's a way to tell the weather without having to be on your phone. The coconut weather station was made on a lake in Wisconsin. That's where the idea came from. If you know someone who lives in the Minneapolis area, chances are they have a cabin either up north Minnesota or across the border and into Wisconsin. When I traveled to Wisconsin recently, we saw this weather station and thought it was a genius idea since Minnesota has some weather problems. In the summer of 2022, Minnesota hit a high of 85 but also had a tornado come later that day with hail the size of a tennis ball. Phone lines were down, the tv would not turn on, and the power was just simply gone. This is when the weather station would come in handy. It was the end of May and everyone had their boats in the water but no way to know if it was safe to take them out for a bit. This is where the weather station would be useful, but nobody had thought of it yet. So in May of 2023, I saw this weather station and decided to bring back the coconut to Minnesota, where it could be put to good use. Then on June 1st, 2023, it hit a high of 90 degrees and then thunderstorms all night, but of course, people were out boating because they did not know any better. This is where my brilliant plan could be put into action.

Hi! My name is Ella Hall.l I will be attending Rutgers University in New Brunswick and swimming. While I am there I plan on studying sports management. Studying sports management has always been a dream of mine. It was not until recently that I discovered that the field is mainly men and that I want to change the course of it for the women that come behind me. Working in sports management I have always wanted to work for an NHL or an NFL team. Growing up I have always loved sports and am continuing my athletic career in college while pursuing this degree. I believe that this major is not just for men, but for women also. Nowadays kids use TikTok, and when I open the app up I see a lot of women in sports and that keeps inspiring me to do this major. I see women working in the sports industry and sitting sideline at basketball games and on the field at football games. All of these women work for men's professional athletic teams and post on TikTok to try and get more women to pursue the same field. I see all of these women dressing up in cute suits and dresses and making statements at sports games. A few years ago I wanted to just do business management or marketing. Then I discovered I could do that and work in sports. Which made complete sense to me since I love watching sports and attending sporting events. As I have been trying to meet people in college that are doing the same major as me, I have only met boys. This makes me wonder if some women want to major in sports management, but are too afraid to since it's mainly men in the industry. I talked to my Dad about this and he loves the idea of me working in the sports industry and being in a mainly men's environment. He asked me what my dream job was and I said either working for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers or the Tampa Bay Lightening. I do believe that this is all possible. I want to change the course of sports management to try and make it 50% men and 50% women in the future. I also want to change the industry so that women and men can be treated the same. This has always been a dream of mine and I can not wait to pursue it more in college. I want to one day be able to change the idea of only men working in the sports industry to teams. Thank you!

I want to work for an NHL or an NFL team and change women in sports, since I'm studying sports management in a field that is 99% men.

When I started swimming around the age of five, I loved it. I am someone who grew up around sports and has a soft spot for them. Sports fascinate me and I enjoy watching classic fall football on Sundays with my Dad. Or going to High School games. I swam all four years of high school, for a team that made a huge impact on my life. As a freshman, I got to win a state championship with some of the most astounding older girls I have ever met. As a senior, I got to win another state championship while being one of those older girls, that younger kids looked up to. After winning that state championship and celebrating it with our school's athletic director. It made me realize that I want to do something like that. When it came to applying for a college school, I entered the School of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers. I already feel so fortunate that I get to swim in college, but to also have the chance to study Sports Management in college is a blessing. Being a college athlete is one thing, but I feel like having the opportunity to study Sports Management is another. Whenever our high school makes a state championship, you can always find our athletic director there. One of my mom's favorite lines about him is "He is everything at once." Our athletic director also loves swimming and finds it fascinating. He says that it is one of the most underrated sports, which I agree with. Unfortanlty this year he could not make our state meet, which ended in one of the most thrilling ways ever. Talking to him when we went back to school, he was sad that he missed it, but so proud of us for pulling out the win when we were not seen as the favorite. Since I live in Minnesota, we are a big hockey school. At the boy's state championship game, I remember seeing him next to the student section joining in on school cheers and even bringing out a beach ball. But our athletic director is not just an athletic director, he is also the board president of the Minnesota State High School League. Therefore we saw him in the student section one minute wearing green and white, and the next on the ice in a suit and tie handing out medals. Another thing I love about our athletic direction is that he is involved in school, I always see him in the mornings and have a 10-second conversation with him before I rush off to class. I want to be like him after college. I want to be the athletic director that everyone loves and I want to attend every sporting event that I can. However, one of the biggest reasons I want to be an athletic director is to promote swimming. I want to make it just like hockey was at the state championship, and I want it to be a sell-out event. I see swimming as being an underrated sport and I want it to become more than that. I want people to see swimmers as athletes and not just as a sport that anyone can do. I want to get my degree in Sports Management and eventually become the athletic director that my high school had, that everyone loves.

I am a senior at Edina High School and will be continuing to swim next year at Rutgers University. Throughout my four years at Edina, I have been on the varsity swimming and diving team. I have won all-American, all-state, and all-conference awards all four years. My team has been state champions twice in my four years. Since I started swimming when I was 3, I have tried to give back to the community by teaching swim lessons. I have taught through Lifetime Fitness and tried to encourage young kids to take swim lessons. I had countless coaches throughout the years, who have all supported me and helped me along the way. When I joined my first club team, we had something called Buddies. My buddy was Anne Lazor, who is now an Olympic athlete. She was the kindest person you could imagine. She was something I looked up to and wanted to be like. She was a breaststroker and went on to swim in college. She was my role model growing up until we moved away. I ended up becoming a breaststroker and now am going to continue to swim in college starting this fall. I looked up to so many people growing up and wanted to be just like them. I try to give back to the community since I had so many people who taught me how to swim and supported me throughout my career. I believe that knowing how to swim is important. Living in Minnesota, we have over 10,000 lakes and wherever I go there is always a lake. I have heard of kids drowning or almost drowning and want to do my best to prevent that the best that I can. A way to do that is through swim lessons and teaching kids when they're young how to swim and how to be safe around the water. Water safety is very important. I have been lifeguarded at nearby pools to be someone who saves lives and teaches swim lessons to kids who were just learning how to swim. I have never had to save anyone, but I've heard many stories from friends about them saving people, even adults. Hearing these stories makes me want to prevent these things from happening in the future. Therefore I have tried my best to give back to the community by teaching swim lessons to kids no matter where they come from. I hope to continue to do something like this in the future after receiving a Sports Management degree.

When I was three, my Mom took me to her former swim coach. He taught me how to swim and made me the person I am today. From the age of three to eight, he coached me on a much bigger level than just swimming. Yes, he did get me to swim in college, but he also taught me to be a better person. When I turned seven, I was beginning to get faster. I would win every event I swam and break records at every pool I visited. My coach, however, taught me to be humble and nice to other athletes. Even today I still am using what he taught me to become a better person. In November of 2022, my team won a state title, and I was still the humble person from when I was seven. When I turned eleven, my Grandpa died. My parents pulled me out of school and took me to California for his funeral. It was not considered a funeral by my Grandma, but a celebration of his life. When I was little, my Grandpa would get in the pool with me and swim. We would play games and laugh. He even came to Michigan to watch me swim and cheered me on every time. When we returned to Michigan after the funeral, I went right back to practice. I wanted to be in the water. It was my coping method. Despite what was going on outside of the water, I could clear my head and pretend as if nothing had happened. I would go home and life would hit me again. It took me quite a while to realize that he was truly gone. Swimming kept me happy and gave me a purpose in my life when everything would feel like it was falling apart. When my Dad took a new job in Minnesota and we moved for the third time, I once again found swimming to be my happy place and enjoyed it. Moving around a lot and never being able to keep friends from past places, hurt me. Swimming was the one thing that I could look forward to because it followed me around everywhere and had a huge impact on my life. I am not the smartest person in the world. Academics have always been hard for me and I feel as if swimming gave me a reason to go to college. In the Fall of 2023, I will be attending Rutgers and swimming there. I did not get offered an athletic scholarship, but the sport of swimming will still be there for me. My three-year-old self would be so proud.

Since I was 3 years old, I loved swimming. I grew up around the sport and am now continuing it in college. My mom swam and my siblings did for a while. I continued swimming as I grew older and it followed me around no matter where I went. I had so many amazing opportunities to swim in places like Florida, Minnesota, California, and Texas. Some of the places were college pools and others were outside in world-renowned pools. Sports has impacted my life in many ways. I almost like to say that swimming was the reason I got into college it. Without it, I truly have no clue where I would have ended up. I have loved watching NFL, NHL, MLB, and NBA games since I was little. I try to attend sporting events as much as possible. My aunt, who works for the rose bowl, gave me the idea that if I loved sports so much, I should look into a sports-related degree. Thinking about the idea of working on the sidelines of an NFL game or being the athletic director of a D1 school has motivated me to be the best out there. I have chosen to go into Sports Management and will start in the fall of 2023 at Rutgers University. I have also chosen to continue swimming D1 there, another one of my dreams. While I pursue my degree, I want to intern with one of our school's athletic teams and want to intern in the summer at a nearby pro team. As Rutgers is so close to New York and Philadelphia, I want to grow my connections with many of the teams. After I graduate I want to find a sports team and work on the sidelines. As I am someone who hates sitting in the same place for a long time, I have found sports to be a way to move around as much as possible. My dreams are to work for a pro team, go back to my Alma Mater and work in the athletic department, or go to ESPN and work on the sidelines with them. As I have grown up I realized it takes many people to put on a sporting event or to run an NFL game. As a swimmer, I know that it takes roughly 100 people to run a meet, even just for a few days. I want to be able to give back to the sporting community by helping to run those games smoothly and make them more enjoyable for people to watch.