By Dakota Antelman, Contributing Writer
Allen Carmody. Photo/submitted
Northborough – His lifelong love for sports still fresh, Northborough native Allen Carmody is preparing to spend his summer helping plan and run baseball games in one of the best-known collegiate baseball leagues in the country – The Cape Cod Baseball League.
A rising junior at Endicott College in Beverly where he studies sports management, Carmody secured an internship with the Falmouth Commodores of the Cape League late last year. Through the internship, he will plan and coordinate everything from pregame ceremonies to in-game events like raffles.
The former captain of the Algonquin Regional High School football team, Carmody said his career goals stem from his childhood love of sports.
“On any given day, anything can happen,” he said. “There’s really never a boring moment, so I figured that, if I worked in sports with that passion and excitement, I would be happy in the future after I find a job.”
With eight other interns, he will trail the Commodores as their players – student-athletes from across the country – face off against nine other Cape League clubs from across Cape Cod. The league itself has been a part of Cape Cod summers for decades and has drawn hundreds of future major league players to its rosters over the years.
It is well regarded among baseball fans and coaches alike, a fact that prompted Carmody to first apply for this internship.
Though he had heard about the Cape League before, Carmody learned more about it during an internship at the Hit Quarters sports complex in Shrewsbury last summer. That internship, which brought him into contact with coaches of club teams as well as managers of the complex itself, featured frequent conversations about baseball and small but competitive leagues like the Cape League.
“They were all big baseball people, so they talked about it a lot and I got to know more [about it] last summer,” he said. “That was really my first introduction to it.”
His internship with Hit Quarters was mostly limited to work within the sports facility. As he planned for the second of three internships Endicott requires he complete before graduation, Carmody wanted to branch out into game planning and game-day operations.
With plans to graduate one year early, with the Class of 2018 next May, Carmody now sees the game-day experience he will gain with the Commodores as a sample of a possible career path within the larger field of sports management.
“I think want to work for a team and be part of a team but I want to see this summer what that team atmosphere feels like when you’re working for one particular team,” he said. “I want to make sure that that’s something I want to do.”
Carmody, indeed, remains somewhat uncertain about how he wants to turn his degree into a career. While he said he thinks he wants to work for a team, Carmody also said he is interested in facilities management jobs in places similar to the Hit Quarters complex.
Nevertheless, as he starts a summer during which he hopes he will experience first-hand the planning behind competitive sporting events, Carmody, a sports fan for life, is sure of one thing.
“I want to be excited about work,” he said.