Halton Arena — First Men's Volleyball Club Match on Campus

Every time we walked to practice, we passed the center court. We never played on it, but I always thought about what it would be like if we did. That idea sat with me from freshman year without ever really going anywhere.

Fast forward to senior year. I was working and had an IT ticket to pick up a box of surplus phones from the Halton Arena building manager's office, and while I was there I figured I had nothing to lose. I pitched the idea on the spot. Told him I was on the men's volleyball club team, that we had always wanted to play on center court, and asked what it would take. He didn't shut it down. He laid out exactly what would be required and made sure I understood this wasn't something you just show up and do. Scheduling conflicts with basketball and women's volleyball, facility compliance, logistics. There was real work involved. I got his email, went home that night, and started putting something together.

The proposal I sent him covered everything. I committed to bringing in App State as the opposing team, hiring certified referees, handling all the graphics and marketing myself, and managing the event from start to finish. He was on board. After that it was just a matter of finding an open date on the arena calendar, which meant months of follow-up emails through September, October, and November with no confirmed window yet.

Then on February 3rd, the email came in. We had February 12th. Nine days.

What made those nine days interesting is that life didn't stop because I had an event to pull off. I was still going into work every day, going to class, and showing up to practice. Everything I did for this event was happening in the margins. Early mornings, lunch breaks, late nights. I was the only senior officer on the team, and the rest of my officers were all newer members who hadn't done anything like this before. I wanted to show them how it was done, so I decided to take point on every piece of it rather than distribute work I wasn't sure would get done the way it needed to be.

I built out a central planning document with every contact, every task, and every deadline mapped out. From there I put together a media timeline so we could roll out the event in increments, giving people enough time to put it on their calendar or just stay reminded that it was coming. I got a few guys together, set up a photo shoot, and worked with a graphic designer to put together clean Instagram posts to push it out the right way. I also had to coordinate with App State directly, making sure they knew where to go, when to show up, what to bring, and what to expect from playing in that kind of environment.

On the production side I had to make sure the lights, audio, and music were all set up correctly. I tracked down the right equipment to run music during the match and sat down with a friend to build out a full three-hour playlist from scratch. Logos also had to be right, so I made sure we had the UNCC and App State graphics locked in and ready to go. Running an event at this scale comes with real costs. Fire watch, medical staff, and event management personnel are all required just to open the doors, so budgeting for that was part of the job too. Through all of it, the biggest challenge was just keeping everyone aligned. Making sure players, spectators, staff, and App State were all on the same page at the same time took constant follow-through all the way to tip-off.

We ended up taking the win against App State. It was genuinely one of the most stressful things I put together in college, but the payoff made every late night worth it.