UCFB Etihad Campus student Rebecca Hawksworth recently undertook the great opportunity to work at the Fever Tree Championships at Queen’s Club, the warm-up tennis event ahead of Wimbledon.
The BA (Hons) Multimedia Sports Journalism student worked as a tennis media liaison officer. Here, she tells us how she got the job and how she found her experience working in a different sport away from football…
I’ve not only grown up as a football fan, but since I was a child I have also had a huge passion for tennis. Since starting my degree at UCFB, I’ve been desperate to find some media experience within tennis but had found it hard to come by.
In March, I emailed several different tennis tournaments in the UK and asked if they had any form of media work experience going. Fortunately for me, and surprisingly at the time, the press officer of the Fever Tree Championships picked up my email and gave me a call. She said that they were looking to hire someone to fill a media liason/runner role for the tournament and that she would love to meet me to discuss it. A couple of weeks later and I went down to London to meet her and she offered me the job!
My main tasks revolved around looking after the various press in attendance at the event and essentially keeping them happy. I was tasked with things from escorting journalists to interviews with players and various media areas, to releasing all the breaking tournament news to the journalists and attending press conferences.
I spent ten straight days working 12-hours each day, and even though to many that sounds incredibly tiring, it didn’t bother me one bit because I loved every single second. I was able to make so many connections with various newspaper journalists, BBC producers and radio broadcasters.
It was also a crazy experience getting the opportunity to meet and have conversations with many of the British tennis players such as current number one Kyle Edmund, as well as Jamie Murray and Dan Evans. I had huge stars such as Nick Kyrgios stood next to me in the queue for food asking me what was being served, and the likes of Novak Djokovic and Marin Cilic walking past me and saying “good morning” on a regular basis. It was all very crazy but for a huge tennis fan like myself it was fantastic to be working in an environment with all these tennis players, seeing what goes on behind the scenes and how the whole event is run in general.
I’ve completed several different work experiences while I’ve been studying at UCFB, but for me this was by far and away the most beneficial one I have done to date and also the most enjoyable! Before working at Queen’s, I had it in my mind to try and make a career in the media department of a football club, and even though that is still a career I would be more than happy to follow, I have realised that my true passion is tennis.
I would love to forge a career as something like a press officer or PR and communications manager at different tennis tournaments and travel around the world. As part of my work at Queen’s, I had to work closely with the PR and marketing staff for ATP, tennis’ governing body, and getting to see what they do day-in, day-out for a job just looked incredible. The whole event has really thrown up several different career options now for me to consider, rather than the one set path that I was insistent on before.
