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Matt King
Sophomore, Biology
Student assistant for the athletics department
Matt King’s job constantly changes. He typically works at four athletics games each week, but the sport varies according to the season, and King’s duties vary, too.
At men’s basketball games, he’s sometimes scurrying around as an operations assistant—tracking down forgotten items, cleaning up spills, making sure everyone’s in place for autograph signing. It’s busy, but there’s always an upside. “I found it interesting that you could have a job where you get paid to go to a game you were going to go to anyways,” he says.
The most challenging part of his job? Learning the rules. Originally from Jamaica, King knew nothing about basketball. Volleyball was completely foreign to him as well. Even soccer, which he was familiar with, was a challenge since rules for college soccer are different than those for professional soccer. And working soccer games means being at the ready the entire game—King has helped control substitutions, keep time, track who scored and who assisted, and chase down balls. “It’s amazing how quickly a ball can go missing,” he says.
Hitting the Right Note: Handling the music played during basketball games is King’s favorite assignment—he sits courtside with the announcer and picks music from his iPod to help pump up the crowd. It’s not always easy finding songs that appeal both to students and the older alumni attending the game: “If I’m playing too much hip-hop, they’ll be the first to say something.”
Clean-up Crew: King’s job doesn’t end with the game. While the janitorial staff cleans the upper areas of the gym, King and others from athletics help out in the lower areas. That means packing up the chairs and tables and picking up leftover trash—students make the biggest mess, he says. “At least at athletics games, you never know what’s coming next. In an office job, it would be, ‘Today’s filing, tomorrow’s filing, the day after that’s filing.’ Instead, I never know what’s going to happen.”
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