Guest Blog Entry - Mr. Michael Schroeder (Media Relations Intern '08)

It’s time for another guest blogger to grace the pages of Maynard’s Musings. I’m Michael Schroeder, and I was the media relations intern for the Mallards last summer. I’m guessing the hard-working front office staff needed to get some more things done around the ballpark as Opening Day approaches, so they went to the bullpen for today’s Musing.

Last summer in Madison was probably the most fun summer of my whole life. You might think that having about five days off the whole summer and working 12-15 hour days sounds awful, but when you realize that you get to spend your summer at the ballpark there really isn’t anything better. With all that time together, the people in the front office and the other interns start to feel like your family. I’m from central Illinois, and after we got past all the “flatland” jokes (I think they finally stopped about the first week of August) that really became the case.

One of the many things I loved about being an intern with the Mallards was that every day brought something different. A new team came to the ballpark, a new promotion was happening and new people were coming to experience a game at the “Duck Pond.” My major duties revolved around helping the media with interview requests and whatever else they needed, plus writing game previews, post-game stories, feature stories and press releases to send to the media and post on the website. I also did a lot of work with statistics and other miscellaneous things for the coaching staff and players. It really solidified in my mind that sports media relations is what I want to do for a career.

If you’ve ever been to a game at the “Duck Pond” (and if you haven’t, you definitely need to this summer), you already know about what a great environment it is to see a game. That’s more of a marketing, promotions and operations thing, so I wanted to talk a little bit about the quality of the team that you’ll see on the field.

I spend the school year as the team manager for the University of Illinois baseball team (home of current Mallards Brandon Wikoff and Nick Chmielewski, and former Mallards Joe Bonadonna and Mike Rohde, among others). I’ve been looking through the roster for this year’s team, and once again, Vern and Coach Thieleke have done a great job of getting quality players from great baseball schools. Some of these guys are dominating the headlines with their performances so far this year, and many of their teams are competing for conference championships and the postseason. It’s quite an assortment of talent from all across the country, so I’m sure the fans will love watching these guys play on a daily basis this summer. It should be another quality Mallards team taking the field and competing for a championship.

I guess I’ll wrap it up for this entry. It was a nice surprise to open my email and see another “assignment” from Jerrad. It brought back memories of last summer and getting one of the tasks that needed to be done or media requests that needed to be handled. I know the “Duck Pond” is going to be rocking again this summer with great family fun and great baseball. Let’s try to get back to the championship series and bring one home this time.