Kelsey Van Ackeren - Merchandise Intern - Blog

So I guess it’s my turn to try and figure out what to write for my blog and I am little late past my deadline but today just seems like the perfect day for me to finish it and get it done and over with. We had a game last night and we ended up losing to Battle Creek 5-3. The guys are away playing in Duluth today and activities around the duck pond aren’t as busy as they normally would be as compared to game days so I have some time to do finish it. First off I will let you know a little bit about myself and who I am before I begin to ramble on about who knows what because I usually have a tendency to do that from time to time. My name is Kelsey Van Ackeren and I am from St. Cloud, Minnesota and I go to the University of Minnesota-Crookston and my major is Sport and Recreation Management. No one really knows where Crookston is except for Dogger because of course he has been there and he knows where everything is, but for those of you that do not know where it is it is way up in the northwestern corner of Minnesota. I map quested it just out of curiosity to see how far it was from Madison and it says its about 9 hours and 22 minutes from Madison, give or take. There is another Kelsey in the office who was an intern from last year so in the beginning of the summer we quickly figured out that one of us was going to need a nickname. We tried a few different ones until we settled with the perfect one for me which is K-deuce or K2. I decided that I wanted to venture out this summer and see what the Madison Mallards were all about and luckily got an internship as the souvenir/merchandise intern. I soon came to realize that the Mallards are way above and beyond anything that I had expected. The team and organization is on a totally different level then any other team in the Northwood’s league and it is probably one of the coolest experiences I have ever had or I think will ever have and I love being apart of it.

I was a little nervous come out to Madison all by myself not knowing anyone or knowing where anything was. And after getting lost about a million times, running out of gas on my way to work, using map quest I am starting to figure out where everything is and what streets are which, or I at least know how to get to and from my apartment and to the malls of course. As far as not knowing anyone, that is definitely not the case. Everyone that works at the ballpark and especially the Mallards staff have become kind of like a second family. This internship requires you to be at the ballpark a lot and when you have people that you can laugh with and love to be around it makes the time go by ten times faster. I know that I have met some pretty cool people and will continue my relationships with them when the summer comes to an end.

As far as the internship side of things, I work a lot on my own folding, and cleaning, and organizing, as well as taking inventory on all the merchandise and making sure everything is ready to go for game time. You can either find me in the main souvenir stand or the Duckwear Depot jamming out to the radio as loud as it can go on a country station which everyone loves so much, especially Nick. Nick is my supervisor and I definitely keep him on his toes and he keeps me in line. I can tell you pretty much everything and anything about the style, size, and color of any t-shirt, sweatshirt, or hat. I usually take care of online orders every morning which is one of my favorite parts of the day so that I can be around the people that are in the office and get my daily Mallard gossip in for the day.

I am so happy that I am in Madison for the summer. It’s been the best summer of my life. This internship has taught me so many things that I am going to be able to use in the future. I have learned a lot about what it takes to run a baseball team and seeing everything that goes into it, it’s pretty amazing.

Here are some highlights so far:
Driving the hot pink and lime green jeep around when I went to go run errands and try and find office depot and the vacuum store.
Going to Lacrosse on a road trip and then Ryan hitting Dan in the nose with the ball when he wasn’t looking or ready and breaking it.
Girls trip to Green Bay with John.
Listening and singing to country EVERYDAY, and everyone hating it which makes me do it even more.
Tarping is always a fun time.
Mallards TMZ
pressing numbers and names on the back of shirts…NOT
always trying to make Amie snort
answering is always a good time and trying to take ticket orders