There are so many on-campus jobs for students, but sometimes finding a job that piques students’ interests can be hard to find with students needing to fulfill a work study award or merely for extra cash.
Some jobs more commonly known on campus are Post 95, the Information Desk or the Central Dining Room. However, there are jobs that aren’t talked about, such as being an Athletic Statistician for the Tiger Sports Network.
When the word statistician is thrown out in conversation, often, people think of math or statistics. While the job is concerned with statistics, there is specific focus on different numbers that are being tracked as the stats of the games. For instance, these include the number of rebounds that are made throughout the first half of a basketball game or how many shots are made during a soccer game, which athlete took those shots and where the ball hits within the goal.
Currently, a set of seven students work under Wittenberg’s Sports Information Director, Kuris Duggan. Duggan can always be found working alongside the students when they are up in the press box tracking the game. He typically types in the computer what is happening so that the stats are live, while there is a student writing the plays and another student or two calling the plays of the game.
“Working with the students here at Wittenberg is what keeps me coming back to work with a smile each day,” Duggan said. “As an undergraduate student, I had a very positive experience working in my school’s athletic department, and that has a lot to do with who I am as a person, as I now try and replicate that experience and pay it forward to my students. Wittenberg is such a special place, as I have never been in a setting where the students are as hard-working and dedicated to the process and the time it takes to get things done. I truly feel that the student workers I come across on a daily basis will one day make great employees in whatever field they decide to venture into.”
The students have a lot of fun together and enjoy working with each other, and of course there’s the bonus of enjoying college sports with friends. While they may not get to sit in the stands and cheer on the Tigers from the crowd, these students are still silently rooting them on from afar. A job as an athletics statistician has provided many students with friends, a solid support system and helped many to feel at home while at Wittenberg.
