ODU Student Interns With Jets

By Jim DeAngio

What would you do for the chance to be part of a National Football League team, if only, say, for six weeks? Would you work around the clock? Lace up endless pairs of cleats? Wash and dry mountains of dirty laundry?

While this might seem like a TV reality show pilot, for one Old Dominion student, it was “a dream come true.”

For the past two summers, 20-year-old Daniel Cornier did all of the above and more as a summer camp intern for the New York Jets. He packed and unpacked for road games, sometimes until four in the morning. He ran errands. He inventoried hip pads, chin straps and mouthpieces.

“I grew up in the Bronx, so naturally I was a Jets fan when I was little,” explained Cornier, a junior sports management major. “When I learned about the opportunity to intern with the Jets ... I just couldn’t pass it up, so I applied.”

While he enjoyed being on the sidelines, watching and working with famous athletes, the experience was also great exposure to the world of professional sports from behind the scenes. Cornier, who is a manager on the Monarch baseball team, hopes one day to work as an equipment manager for a professional baseball team, but he now admits that he could see himself working for a pro football team as well.

For his internships at the Jets’ training camp on the Hofstra University campus, Cornier reported to work in mid-summer, just before the players arrived. Once camp began, his duties started before they showed up in the morning and continued after they left. As the saying goes, it was a tough job, but someone had to do it.

Having the internships on his resume, Cornier hopes, will help him land a permanent job after graduation. “Some people may not like this job, but I do,” he said. “I’ll get to be around baseball or football every day. I’ll get to stand on the sidelines surrounded by thousands of screaming fans, eat with players and coaches, travel with the team when they’re riding high and, of course, when they’re not doing well.

“If I can’t be on a team at least I can be around a team,” he added. “I love sports, love being with the team. Being an equipment manager is probably one of the best ways to do that.