The 2018 USA National Curling Championships are going to be in Fargo for the first time in seven years and an NDSU student has been involved in planning them since September.
Jordan Lunders, a senior majoring in management communication, began interning in September 2017 for the USA National Curling Championships. In December, Lunders was promoted to co-chair of the event, making her even more involved with planning.
Although she has never curled before, Lunders chose this internship because of the uniqueness and she wanted to get into event planning. She was especially interested in sports event planning. “It’s a very unique internship as it’s a national event,” Lunders shared.
The competition consists of 10 men’s teams and eight women’s teams who went through prior trials to be able to qualify for the nationals. They are competing to be qualified for World Men’s Championship, held in Las Vegas, Nevada, and World Women’s Championship, held in North Bay, Ontario.
The teams consist of four people, to which either qualified as a team or qualified individually and were made into a team. The competitors are from all over the United States, but a lot seem to be from the Midwest region.
One team, Team Shuster, is also competing in this year’s Olympics in South Korea, just before the National Curling Championships.
Jordan Lunders planning the nationals has been stressful but a good opportunity.
After her supervisor left in December, Lunders “was promoted to co-chair and then with that new title it gave me more responsibility, so I am now kind of the main point person for a lot of people to contact me from USA curling, Fargo-Moorhead Curling Club — from different organizations that we’re using, for production purposes or rentals to do the ice and stuff like that,” Lunders explained.
“I’ve had more freedom to decide things, whereas before I would kind of just ask my supervisor what she thinks, I’m given a lot more freedom now that I’m co-chair, that I can decide what would be best for the tournament, I’ve been contacting people more on my own, being more independent in my role,” Lunders shared.
“If I have to accomplish something I do not rely on anyone to get it done, it’s more my responsibility,” Lunders explained.
With the internship came a lot of responsibility and a learning experience for Lunders in finding out what the real world truly consisted of. “When I decided on my major as Management Communication I kind of didn’t really know what I wanted to do with that, I knew it was broad enough where I could pick and choose – but now I know what my opportunities are,” Lunders said.
Many see internships as “resume builders” because it is experience for college students in the real world and giving them a chance to figure out if this is truly what they want to do. With that Lunders explained how there were things she never thought about like having the opportunity to graphic design by building the website for the event and being involved in the advertisement side of things.
“My portfolio from this internship will be pretty diverse … I did a lot of every aspect of communication,” Lunders said.
The 2018 National Curling Championships will be an eight-day event held in the Fargo Scheels Arena from March 3 through March 10. Lunders welcomes NDSU students to volunteer for the event.
More information and updates can be found at https://www.usacurlingnationals2018.com/.