The best opportunity of my life

Well, maybe not the best one, I had a lot of great opportunities in my life but this one made a huge difference.

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Spring 2011, two guests came to our sports management seminar at the university with job offer, Peter Bašus and Sofie Paggio. It sounded great, organisation of international sports tournament Prague's Barrel and preparing the European Company Sport Games 2013. They were looking for new recruits. We were about 90 in the class. I reached out to them that I'm interested and thought that they will have so many people that they might not choose me. I was so wrong, only 4 of us signed up for the job, me and 3 guys. Others might be afraid or they didn't find it interesting (what?).

First thing was organising the football tournament Prague's Barrel in June. Everybody got some responsibilities. I'm a very organised person, so I took over the registration, controlling and invoicing. We also got an offer to come to European Company Sport Games (ECSG) 2011 in Hamburg where we presented our Games and also tried to think about our organisation of the Games. It was so great. So many responsibilities for somebody who just finished high school. When somebody gives you work freedom like this you can show your real potential.

ECSG 2011 were also kind of team building for us and we really made a great team. for the Games I was responsible for the whole registration process, leading the database, invoicing and controlling. It fitted me so well!

And my first Prague's Barrel was amazing, so many people at the tournament from different countries. Slowly we have convinced Peter (our boss), that we are worth it and we can make the Games. And the true work began. I reached out to the programmer to set up the registration process. I had utilised my IT skills from my job in an IT company (from 2011 to 2016). To be honest, the two years to the Games are kind of blurry, I had so much on my plate, school, work, Barrel, dancing. I don't know how I managed all of that. :)

We were looking for a lot of volunteers and we got all of our schoolmates who at first said no to the Games. I was in charge of the interviews for the registration desk, I needed reliable people talking different languages.

And it came, year 2013 and Games. My hair fell down completely, my boyfriend (now husband) was half a year away working on Maldives and the first day of Games I got otitis media. I'm not even starting on handling the flooded fields and centers because it was floods that year in Prague. But we have managed, we have survived everything very great. We had 7 216 participants from all over the Europe, the biggest sports event in Prague that year. I can't get how Peter could be so brave to give the organisation into the hands of few students, of course he had well-established team from Prague's Barrel but still we got a huge opportunity.

Meanwhile we did a very good job on Prague's Barrel. After my stay in Norway I offered my help with finding new teams among Scandinavian countries since I have learned some Norwegian so I understood their websites.

And somehow happened that I took over all the French speaking teams. I was learning French almost half of my life but still I wasn't sure while speaking. I had to pay for the French courses to get better but it was the best decision. And now I'm also managing social networks, mainly Instagram.

During the years we stayed only two from the original four students (but one is doing another business with Peter) and we are, together with Sofie, that Sofie who hired us, the most important parts of the team. I think this opportunity helped me a lot with my career. When you handle the challenge like this it will kick you, kick you to be better and have more self-confidence. You just go for it. So I did a lot of amazing things in my work after that. But about that maybe later. :)

It should have been a great side job while being on maternity leave for me but the coronavirus came. Last tournament of 2020 was coming full lockdown, I was pregnant and the only concern was to get the participants home before they would close the borders. I was lucky not to be sick. But still it got me and a year later I was lying in my bed the whole Easter. So cross your fingers for us to open the beer taps again soon.