Internships Open Doors: Changing Game Plans

For Elise Boulton ’24, Plan A was to find a small college where she could play basketball. But she remembers her high school coach counseling her to pick a college where if she quit or got injured, she would want to stay there. His advice proved to be prophetically wise.

“Sure enough, I did get injured,” said Boulton. “I had knee surgery this past summer and I’ll have another knee surgery in December, so I’m done playing basketball. But I wanted to stay here, obviously, so I know I made the right choice going to Simpson.”

Her injury setback has not benched her active pursuit of a career in sports administration. To the contrary, she has had two internships focused on that goal. Her first was with the Iowa Girls High School Athletic Union in the summer of 2022, following her first year at Simpson.

Boulton started out doing social media content creation and assisting with the Union’s spring and summer championships. Her performance earned additional playing time. She went back to work there part-time during her sophomore year and returned yet again for May Term last spring, when she really picked up her game.

“I was a secondary administrator for tennis, so I did everything,” said Boulton. “I got to run my own state championship site — doing the bracketing, dealing with concessions, ticketing, and merchandising. It was super cool, and I loved all of it.”

This year, she’s interning with the athletic director at Norwalk High School, assisting with high school and middle school fall sports. The sum of her internship experiences has helped sharpen her focus.

“I had no idea which niche of sports administration I wanted to pursue initially. Now I know that I love event management and operations. That’s been the biggest take away.”

Boulton is graduating a full year early with two internships already in the win column. And she just scored a prestigious NCAA Postgraduate Internship for 2024–2025. As one of only 34 interns selected nationwide from more than 1,000 applicants, Boulton’s assignment will include various duties related to planning, promoting and managing NCAA Championship events.