What started off as an internship with the sports publicity department at Yale, turned into becoming the first female to travel with the Yale football team in program history.

Nicole Ferrucci, a senior sports management major at the University of New Haven, has been allotted this unique opportunity through her internship at Yale. While her daily tasks include managing the content for the Yale program, handling feature stories, game day information, rosters, schedules and opposing team information, her on-the-road job is a little different.

“Traveling with Yale Football is a great experience,” said Ferrucci. “Being the only girl on these trips makes things interesting for sure. I am the first girl to ever travel with Yale Football, so I definitely mixed things up a little bit. I think it took the coaches and athletes a little while to get used to it as well. They find themselves apologizing to me after inappropriate comments or cursing in front of me. Overall, everyone has been super welcoming and they all treat me like their little sister.”

Departing from Yale around 1 p.m. on Fridays, the crew travels to the city that they will be playing in the following day. Ferrucci explains how the bus rides are usually quiet. They either watch movies or work on homework, while the coaches typically watch film and strategize for the following day’s matchup.

Once the team arrives, it is her job to make sure the players know their room assignments, and that everyone gets all of their belongings off the busses.

When everyone is settled, the athletes typically go to team meetings until dinner. This is Ferrucci’s time to prepare for game day. Her final task of the day is completing room checks to make sure the athletes are in their rooms and going to bed to get rest for the upcoming day.

Her game day her responsibilities range from tracking player participation to conducting the post-game press conferences with some of the athletes and coaches.

“I have definitely learned a lot at my internship. It’s absolutely incredible. I have never really had to work with so many moving parts before,” said Ferrucci. “This has definitely been a new experience for me, especially as someone who likes to have control of everything all the time. It has been a big adjustment learning to adapt to everyone else’s schedules and try to work with the very limited time that we all have.”

While she has accomplished incredible feats, she says that getting this internship with Yale Football was fairly easy after already having two previous internships with professional sports teams: the New England Black Wolves and the Connecticut Sun.

Ferrucci explained how she has always been an avid football fan, and how Yale was the closest Division 1 football program to the university.  After doing some research, she found the Sports Information Director (SID) at Yale and sent him an email explaining her experience in the field and her intentions of pursuing a career in sports publicity. After a quick phone call with him that same day, she received an offer to help him for football season.

“Just like that, I got an offer to be his intern for the fall,” said Ferrucci.

After all her extensive work, she has come to the conclusion that sports publicity is the field for her, but in professional sports. While college athletic programs bring limitations such as school, working with professional athletes would allow her more time with players for publicity events, and would also allow her a larger budget. She looks forward to working with professional teams and developing unique publicity strategies.

“I personally believe that sports are a great platform to bring awareness to many different issues,” said Ferrucci. “The biggest example of community relations I can think of is when professional athletes visit a children’s hospital and read to kids or just spend time with them. I want to help show the world that these athletes are more than just athletes, they are people that are heavily involved in the community. I would love to work for a professional sports team and help every athlete find their voice and speak out on topics that are close to their hearts.”