This year, Trinity offered a select group of students the opportunity to be involved with hosting the NCAA men’s Final Four in San Antonio. Students accepted to the year-long class were involved with various tasks behind the scenes that made the Final Four happen.
Trinity University’s class partnered with St. Mary’s University, the University of Texas at San Antonio and the University of the Incarnate Word. The students from each university gathered once a month, focusing on a specific aspect of the event. Even though Trinity was involved in helping out with a past men’s Final Four in Houston, associate professor of business administration Jacob Tingle explained that they had to put a lot of work into structuring a class for multiple universities.
“That was what was really neat, to get people from other universities around the table working collaboratively on a learning opportunity for students. It was so cool for me to go in, even though our students sat together and the UTSA students sat together, it was really cool to walk into the Alamodome on those Wednesdays and see 35 to 40 students and UIW students in a room with Trinity students … learning together,” Tingle said.
Tingle and Seth Asbury, Trinity associate athletic director for facilities and event management, worked with professors from other universities to create a syllabus for classes to teach students the necessary skills to be effective volunteers and organizers in sports management. Tingle discussed Trinity’s connection to the event, and how they were able to get involved.
“Trinity has a long standing relationship with San Antonio sports, which is the local nonprofit foundation that does a lot for the community and for sports, especially for youth,” Tingle said. “One way in which they raise funds for those programs is through bringing major sporting events into the city. One of those that we’ve been really fortunate to be a part of since 1999 is to have Final Fours in town. We’ve had a ton of students who have interned with them throughout the year. So a real strong relationship with understanding the quality of our students.”
Junior Jozie Dhayer is a human resource major with a minor in sports management. She explained how taking this class connects to her future career aspirations.
“This experience helped me see what that could actually look like in a real-world setting. Through volunteering from an HR perspective, I got to learn more about how HR principles like organizing people, managing schedules and maintaining positive team dynamics all assist in the succession of the men’s Final Four,” Dhayer said.
Her specific volunteering role was being a “point guard,” where she led other volunteers, monitored shifts and handled any issues that arose with them. Dhayer explained what she learned from this role.
“I learned a lot about adaptability, communication and what it means to lead by example. I felt prepared because of my past leadership experiences through athletics and student organizations. Being a student athlete has helped me stay organized, perform well under pressure and support others, which were all really important in this role,” Dhayer said.
Pierce Jackson, senior business analytics and technology major, assisted with the men’s Final Four March Madness reading challenge, “Read to the Final Four.” This was Jackson’s second time assisting with a men’s Final Four, as he helped with the event in Houston in 2023. As a track and field athlete, Jackson shared the perspective this experience has added to his own sporting events.
“You kind of forget, even at a DIII school, there’s so much planning that goes into every event. When I think about the large scale, the National Championships, there really is so much marketing, promotion, you have to place some bids for your location to be chosen, all that. There’s so much that I didn’t know, that I now do know,” Jackson said.
Jackson elaborated on the process the San Antonio Local Organizing Committee goes through behind the scenes to even be able to host the men’s Final Four.
“The San Antonio Local Organizing Committee spent a year and a half, two years, creating the bid for the location, and then spent an entire year here promoting, and volunteering and doing things all around the city to make sure that it was known way before anybody even thought about the Final Four. There was so much planning that went into this, years worth that I never would have guessed.”
As for the future of the course, Tingle explained what he hopes will happen with the work the San Antonio schools have put into organizing this collaboration.
“What we want to do now is create some more after action reports, but then turn the stuff over to the NCAA,” Tingle said. “So the next host site, they might not like anything we did, but they have 50 documents that they can start with. That’s one of the things that I’m really hoping is that the city of San Antonio and the four universities that participated could potentially leave a longer lasting impact to students that aren’t even ours.”
