On Monday, June 29, Up2Us Sports officially welcomed 180 Summer VISTAs to the 2020 Up2Us Sports Summer VISTA Program. 180 VISTAs started their nine-week service term at 100 nonprofit organizations nationwide. Their term will end on Friday, August 28th.
15 of the 180 VISTAs have been serving internally at Up2Us Sports in various capacities. We are excited to have this group of ambitious service members help our team across the nation, which will in turn help us better serve our 1,700+ member organizations, 470+ host sites and 250+ coaches in the days and months ahead.
We wanted you to get to know the 15 VISTAs who have spent their summer helping grow the capacity of Up2Us Sports from within.
Name: Rachel Wyman
Age: 32
What city are you located in?
Brooklyn, New York
What department within Up2Us Sports are you serving in?
Marketing
What led you to want to do a service term, particularly right now?
Learn more about informing coaches on physical activity promotionI had already gotten some "behind the scenes" experience, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity to get more involved.
What does national service mean to you?
Working to improve the lives of ALL of a nation's people, and also to let those in positions of power know in no uncertain terms when something needs to be changed or corrected.
What is one thing you hope to take away from your 9 weeks of service?
Marketing experience! I've learned that just about everything in this world is about how you present it. Every nuance in the language and images chosen makes a difference, for better or worse.
Did you play sports and did It have an impact on why you decided to serve at a youth sports organization?
I did not play sports, but as a dancer I have been mentored by wonderful teachers and my life has been deeply enriched by movement. Without a doubt, I believe that physical activity allows for greater embodiment and mind-body integration, both of which are empowering. A caring mentor can be a powerful healing presence, for kids and adults alike!
““Writing is the hardest way of earning a living, with the possible exception of wrestling alligators.”— Olin Miller, aphorist
Writing, even for the best of writers, can be a difficult task. It can be quite terrifying to stare at a blank page and have to come up with something from scratch on the spot. The challenge is made even harder if you’re tasked with writing copiously about an organization you haven’t worked in. Add to that, a nine week window within which to carry out your responsibilities and well, you might as well be wrestling alligators. But, that was the challenge the marketing team asked Rachel to take on, and that is the challenge she passed with flying colors. Those VISTA emails you were seeing every other day, extolling the virtues of VISTAs, the ones that played a significant role in helping us to not only meet the 75 applications we were charged with securing, but surpassing that number, that was Rachel’s doing. That great story on coach Kelli, that was Rachel. Content, the expression goes, is king. And for nine weeks, we have had our own queen of content—Rachel Wyman. On behalf of the entire marketing team, thank you Rachel for bringing all of your writerly skills, focus, and keen intelligence to bear during such an important period in Up2Us Sports’ growth. We hope you enjoyed working with us as much as we enjoyed working with you.”
