Mackenzie Brown will begin courses in the sport management program in August. In June, Brown had the opportunity to to travel with future classmates to volunteer at the Saint Francis Tulsa Tough, a three-day cycling festival in Oklahoma. The experience confirmed Brown’s choice to complete her education at UMSL. (Photo courtesy of Mackenzie Brown)

Mackenzie Brown has always felt at home on the soccer pitch, constantly moving with the grass under her cleats. However, Brown has often felt less comfortable sitting still at a desk.

After playing soccer for two years at Lewis and Clark Community College, Brown aimed to finish her bachelor’s degree at a four-year institution. She pursued that goal at two universities, but neither undergraduate program was suited to her dynamic nature and preference for hands-on work.

The options to complete her education in a way that aligned with her needs seemed to be dwindling. That is, until she heard about the sport management program at the University of Missouri–St. Louis.

“I started working at St. Louis CITY, and everybody was talking about UMSL,” Brown recalled. “They came from the sport management program, so I started to look into it. I was like, ‘That’s the program I want.’ So, I just jumped right in.”

This spring, Brown enrolled for the upcoming 2025-26 academic year, but little did she know just how quickly she would be jumping into program. Before she knew it, Karen Boleska, director of the UMSL sport management program, contacted her with an opportunity to travel with the program to volunteer at the Saint Francis Tulsa Tough, a three-day cycling festival in Oklahoma.

“I go through rosters every year and talk to our transfer students,” Boleska said. “One of our alumni mentioned that [Mackenzie] was working at CITY, and it kind of came full circle. I knew we were going to Tulsa, and we were looking for another student.”

In June, Brown found herself in the trenches with her future classmates, working to produce one of the largest, most complicated cycling events in the country. At the end of three days, she felt deeply connected to the group and knew she had found a new home at UMSL – all before taking a single class.

“It was definitely scary at first, because I hadn’t met anybody,” Brown said. “But I truly loved every second of it. It was a lot of fun. I’m still talking about it to this day. Honestly, it really set in that I’m finishing my degree out here.”

In 2020, UMSL launched the sport management program in the College of Education, and Boleska has guided its rapid growth over the past five years. The program focuses on practical skills, which are often developed through internships and volunteer opportunities in the field such as Tulsa Tough.

Students do plenty of work in the classroom sharpening their communication skills through video essays and assessing industry trends through digital media such as Ted Talk videos and podcasts. They also network with professionals in class through the program’s guest speaker series. However, Boleska said students often learn the most on the ground.

“I think one of the biggest lessons that I see as a teacher is how you cannot teach this in the classroom,” Boleska said.

UMSL sport management students (clockwise from front left) Sam Thedford, Mackenzie Brown, Christian Tapia, Andrew Brody, Jared Dunn and Clayton Miller worked nearly non-stop for three days to help produce the Saint Francis Tulsa Tough. (Photo courtesy of Karen Boleska)

With that dynamic in mind, students are encouraged to take advantage of volunteer opportunities throughout the year. Boleska has routinely organized trips to some of the top sporting events in the country including the Super Bowl and Final Four to provide students with hands-on experience.

UMSL students first worked with Medalist Sports, an event production company that specializes in bike races, at Tulsa Tough in 2022. They had such a positive experience that Boleska kept in touch with the company, and UMSL students have continued to take part in the event since. This year, Brown joined five other students on the trip.

When Boleska explains the work at Tulsa Tough to students, she has them imagine the Boston Marathon. Everything that they picture from the dramatic finish line to practicalities like crowd control barriers are put in place by volunteers. However, the Tulsa Tough event poses a unique challenge because it happens over three days with a different race route each day.

“We get the road where it’s empty and blank at 5 a.m. in the morning, and we fill it,” Boleska said. “We fill it with the banners; we fill it with awards; we fill it with podiums, sponsorships, all these different activations. What makes it so hard is that, one, it is the hardest criterium race in the country, and then the other thing is that it’s three locations in three days. We build it on Day One, and we take it down Night One. We move it, and we build it up Day Two. It’s this giant jigsaw puzzle that you move. Literally, the gantry, the big finish line, we physically just rolled through Tulsa.”

Despite the long hours, Brown was in her element. Working part-time in event operations with St. Louis CITY SC, she was familiar with the work and the bustling pace of a live sporting event.

“You have to stay on task because things move so fast,” she said. “You just have to keep going. For me, I love that. I love just constantly going, even if we slept for maybe three hours.”

She also enjoyed the downtime with her future classmates and the chance to bond with them.

“There was one night where we were all just sitting in the living room talking like we had known each other for years,” Brown said. “Seeing that grow into how close we could be while actually on the roads, it made it to where we were working and having fun the entire time.”

The experience confirmed Brown’s choice to complete her education at UMSL. After struggling to find her footing at other institutions, she’s thrilled to be joining a program that places a priority on practical education and exposes students to work they’ll be doing in the field after graduation. The fall semester – and more volunteer opportunities – can’t come soon enough.

“As soon as I got back, I was like, ‘I’m ready for the next thing. What can we go do?’” Brown said. “It was just such a different experience, and I didn’t want to come home one bit. I could have stayed and worked, kept going. The group was absolutely amazing.”