Practical training at KeuPa HT by Arno Vepsäläinen

Finnish professional hockey organization KeuPa HT was looking for a student that was studying sports business management at JAMK to do their practical training with the club. They had some good experiences with previous students and the CEO of the club was actually alumni himself. I thought it would be a interesting opportunity because the team plays in the second highest hockey league in Finland and there is not too many people working with the club. So I had a feeling that I might have an opportunity to work even more than in a bigger club. Also the fact that I did not have to move away from Jyväskylä to do my practical training was big part of the decision.

I mentioned that I had a feeling that I would be able to do and learn a lot with the organization and I was correct. Of course I don’t know how much I could have done in other places but with KeuPa HT I was able to do almost everything. From marketing to sales and organizing the events. Ongoing pandemic brought some problems because people and fans were not really finding their way to the stands. This was understandable but something that we had to overcome. We organized different themes for games and some of them brought more people to the stadium but at the end of my practical training the league made a decision to stop playing because of the regulations that the other option would have been playing to the empty stadiums which was not a option at that point. That is something that I don’t want to experience again if I am lucky enough to work in some sports organization in the future.

After my practical training I asked if I could do my project studies for the organization aswell during spring and after that was asked to work part time until summer. In august I got a phone call if I would be interested to continue working there part-time. I was starting to write my thesis and had to think about it a bit but I still wanted to continue working there because of the great experience I got during my practical training there!

Author: Arno Vepsäläinen