Dean takes on the New England Sports Summit
- Natalie Zona
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
Updated: 4 hours ago
For the second straight year, Dean’s Sports Management club brought students to the New England Sports Summit Event.
The New England Sports Summit is focused towards high school and college students looking to get into sports management, but it also provides opportunities for many more sports careers such as sales, front office, community relations, and broadcasting.
The event was hosted and sponsored by the Worcester Bravehearts, a summer collegiate baseball team located in the heart of Worcester. They play at Holy Cross which is where the sports summit has been held for the last couple of years.
The goal for Dean Students was to be able to network themselves and learn from people who have already broken into the sports industry. President of the Sports Management Club, Elliott Steinberg, said, “It’s important to expand your network and it’s important to have the school invest in this. It’s networking, potential job opportunities, and building connections. No matter what you’re trying to do in sports, it’s harder to get into anything without connections.”
The day began with a morning session that focused on networking etiquette. Since most of the students at the summit would be talking to several hiring managers or representatives of companies throughout the day, it was important to know what to say, how to look, and how to act.
This panel was hosted by Dominic Porcaro and Helena Stamatakis. Porcaro spent multiple summers with the Bravehearts and then was hired by the Tennessee Titans in 2025. He met a member of the Titans staff at the 2025 Sports Summit where he was able to connect with them and create a relationship that became a job opportunity.
Stamatakis is currently working with the Bravehearts as their Community Impact and Fan Services Manager. Before that, she gained experience with the New England Revolution, Massachusetts Pirates, and Curry Athletics as an intern.
Through this introduction panel, they both emphasized the importance of making good first impressions whether that be with professional attire, an up-to-date resume, or just learning how to foster relationships with people you meet. They used their own personal experiences working in the sports world to encourage hundreds of students how to have a successful day.
From there, the keynote speaker, Mike Lynch, addressed the audience. His forte has been in college sports as he has over 25 years of experience between Boston College and his current employer Babson College.
There were four more panels scheduled for the day, two being in the morning and the other two in the afternoon. Those panels covered a variety of topics including pathways into sports, data analytics, and front office fundamentals.
“I think both years were fantastic. They try to get a lot of speakers from the New England, Massachusetts area, which is good to see that there’s a lot of people within the sports world, at our age, that start in the same position we do,” Steinberg also mentioned.
The pathways in sports panel included employees from the New England Patriots, New England Force, and Evolv. While each had different paths to where they are now, the same sentiment rang true in all of them: not everyone’s lives will be linear, and it takes time and hard work to get to where you want to be.
After the first two panels happened simultaneously in the morning, most of the students disbursed to attend the job and college fair taking place outside of the gym. There were over thirty organizations represented, most prominent being the Patriots, Celtics, Red Sox, Bruins, NESN, and New Balance. There were also a handful of colleges there for high school students or college students looking to advance their studies in graduate school.
At the career fair, students could speak directly to representatives, network with them, hand out resumes, and create connections. Most organizations were looking for employees or interns, so there were many opportunities to explore.
First year Dean student and The Dean Daily reporter, Ava Membreno, talked about her experience. “It was very insightful, there were a lot of great tables. A lot of great organizations were all open to hearing what we had to say as students, what our aspirations were, where we were looking to go, I gave out the majority of my resumes. I also talked to people I wouldn’t have gotten the chance to talk to otherwise.”
More students felt the same way with sophomore James Smith noting, “It was very well run, I learned a lot. It even hooked me up with a potential future job opportunity.”
Overall, the New England Sports Summit has been a great pathway for Dean sports management and broadcasting majors to experience.
