The Prairie: What is your classification and major you are studying?
Lakey: I am a senior Sports & Exercise Science major.
The Prairie: Where was your internship? Who with? When? For how long?
Lakey: I interned with the Wichita Wingnuts, a minor league baseball team in the American Association located in Wichita, Kansas. I interned from April 1st to September 15th.
The Prairie: What helped you the most in your internship?
Lakey: What helped me the most to get my internship is my experience in the organizations I am involved in. By being the Recruitment Chairman, Treasurer, and President of Phi Delta Theta, I gained the experience necessary for my internship. Also, LEAD WT has given me the leadership skills to excel at my internship, which ultimately led to my acceptance of the Intern of the Year Award.
The Prairie: How did you learn about the internship?
Lakey: I learned about the internship by going to the Oklahoma City Thunder Career Fair in February that was held at Chesapeake Energy Arena.
The Prairie: What was your initial reaction when you learned you received the nomination of Intern of the Year?
Lakey: I was very pleased that my advisor, Dr. Fiaud, nominated me for this award. It is a very cool feeling when a professor notices your hard work and achievements you have accomplished. This is the cool thing about WT, the smaller class sizes allow you to have a good relationship with your professors, which is not as easy at a larger campus.
The Prairie: How did you react when you officially won the award, especially the first one ever?
Lakey: I was very surprised that I officially won the award because there were a lot of very strong candidates that were nominated.
The Prairie: What made your internship different when compared to the other finalists?
Lakey: What made my internship different was the amount of hours that I was able to put in and the hands on experience of every aspect of minor league sports. I don’t know of many internships that require you to work 14 hour days for 50 days of the summer, and for 16 days, working from 3 PM to anywhere from 3 AM or 8 AM the next day to host the National Baseball Congress World Series. Also, by working the games, I was able to work all aspects from customer service, working the gift shop, or executing the aspects of the in game promotions.
The Prairie: What did you learn from your internship?
Lakey: I learned so much from my internship, but the biggest thing I learned is that when you are inspired to work for a cause bigger than yourself, you will achieve phenomenal results. Brian Rose, the Wingnuts bench coach who passed away in January from melanoma, was our inspiration for this season. Everything that we did was in honor of him, so it was cool to see everything develop in honor of someone was had passed away.
