Preparation for Uni Games

The semester is going so fast every day keeps rolling into the next and before you know it the next week is the end of another month. So as the days have got ahead of me, my third blog posted is based on the preparation leading up to the Uni Games carnival that concluded last week.

Throughout all the preparation I have gone through leading up to the Games nothing has seemed to matter more than the importance of being organised! If you aren’t organised in this industry it becomes very hard to stay on top of things. You need to be organised in case of errors or any unforseen circumstances.

The week before the Uni Games carnival commenced I was involved in a lot of organising as the staff I am working with have been doing Uni Games for years and are very aware of the amount of work that needs to go into the preparation for the week to run smoothly.

With over 200 students competing we had to organise and sort all their uniforms into sizes and numbers and then into their competing teams ready for their collection. Along with this organising all their accreditation passes to make them eligible to participate for the week. As you can imagine this was very time consuming and every thing had to be double checked to make sure everyone was receiving the correct things. However, being organised and having spread sheets on hand (never thought I would like using Microsoft excel!) made the process a lot easier for us.

My supervisor also suggested I schedule a lot of posts on all our social media forums to save me time during the week of the Games (which at the time I thought I would have it covered but boy am I glad she made me schedule them!) I scheduled multiple game times on twitter and organised all the social media accounts ready to go for the week.

We had a final team meeting where all students were briefed on their expectations, introduced to the staff members that would be looking after their team for the week, presented them with their uniforms and had a short presentation from the physios that would also be looking after them also.

Everyone then assembled out the front of the gym where an all team photo was taken and then proceeded to walk through the Uni in the first ever pep rally bringing awareness of Uni Games. It was lead by a marching band and followed by a sausage sizzle provided by Guild. While walking through the Uni it was great to hear people say things like “What is this for” and people respond “Oh Uni Games” or “Uni Games in coming up” which indicated the pep rally had gained some awareness it was hoping for!

We ended with a staff meeting where we each received a handbook of all the important information we needed for the week and what everyone’s role and expectations were. We organised hire cars, where the photographers and mascot were going, along with the emergency phone and meeting times.

Through this week leading up to the Games I have discovered that being organised is definitely a major key to a successful event. Stay tuned for my Fourth Blog Post all about the week of Uni Games!

Photos: Organising all the uniforms and the final product of them all bagged and labelled!