Score! Five days after Colby Davis graduated from the online Master of Science (M.S.) in Sports Administration – Educational Leadership program at Southeastern Oklahoma State University, she started a new associate athletic director position.
“I always had aspirations to be an athletic director,” she said. “My whole reason for getting my master’s degree was to prepare me for that role and separate myself from other candidates.
“I finished the program the Friday before I started my new job the following Wednesday. The district was hiring an associate athletic director and an assistant athletic director. A master’s degree is required for the associate athletic director position, so the timing was perfect.”
Davis is now at Lewisville Independent School District in Texas. While enrolled in the online master’s degree program, she was girls basketball head coach at nearby The Colony High School.
“Teachers and coaches put so many hours in anyway, so the online format was crucial,” she said. “I had two seasons worth of trying to get work done. The online option is the only way it would have been feasible for me to get my degree.”
Before enrolling in the online M.S. in Sports Administration – Educational Leadership program, Davis researched programs at several universities.
“It was one of the more affordable options online,” she said. “I wanted something that was going to be relevant to what I was doing.
“Based on the conversations with people who had gone through some of the classes and programs, it was very relevant to what I was doing as a coordinator, a teacher, a coach. It was important to me that it was applicable to my job and was able to provide me resources I could use right now. That was the biggest selling point.”
Game Plan
Davis grew up in Seymour, Texas, where she played multiple sports in high school and saw a clear career option come to light.
“I had a ton of great coaches growing up, a lot of great mentors who helped me along,” she said. “If it weren’t for those influential people in my life, I don’t know that this would be the career path I would have chosen. They played such a role in me getting into athletics and wanting to help kids and be a mentor.”
After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in kinesiology and English from Texas Tech University in 2005, Davis spent most of the early portion of her career coaching in Bowie, Texas. She enrolled at Southeastern Oklahoma in March 2020.
“It was so funny because I was taking a class, Administration of Athletics, where I had to create a tournament and plan it out with things like facility management,” she said. “That was pretty cool. That class was most applicable to my current job as coordinator.”
The applicability of the courses in the curriculum, including School Administration and Public School Law, rang true throughout the program for Davis.
“The last class, Applied Research Methods, was the most time-consuming course, but I did my project about coaching retention rates and transformational athletic departments,” she said.
“We are trying to figure out how to hang on to coaches now. I spent seven weeks researching and writing a paper about the best ways to do that. I am living that as we speak.”
Even with a full plate throughout the school year, the online master’s degree program was manageable for Davis.
“It was the right amount of work for being a teacher, coach and educator,” she said. “I didn’t feel overwhelmed by a lot of the classes.
“The work was appropriate. The program is designed [for students] to do two classes at a time. I didn’t do that the whole time, but I didn’t have to get the program done by a certain time. It was helpful.”
Nothing but Net
Davis didn’t tell a lot of her family members that she returned to higher education until she wrapped up her degree. She is the first person in her immediate family to earn a master’s degree.
“It was something I had been putting off and had been needing to get done to advance my career and get where I wanted to go,” she said. “They were fully supportive of that.
“When I finished, it was like, ‘Wow, it’s done.’ Our district had five softball and baseball teams in the playoffs. I spent my commencement at a softball game. I get paid to watch a lot of sports.”
The whole experience in the online M.S. in Sports Administration – Educational Leadership program was positive for Davis.
“My professors were great, and they understood that the majority of people in that track were teachers and coaches,” she said. “One of the coolest things I found was interacting with my classmates all over the United States. I got to learn what coaching looks like in California and Montana. That was neat, too.”
Now that Davis has graduated and achieved her goal of becoming an athletic director, she believes there’s no time like the present for her fellow coaches considering a master’s degree to enroll at Southeastern Oklahoma.
“Do it,” she said. “Don’t put it off. It’s going to help advance your career, but it’s also something where you’re going to be able to learn and work through things you’re probably already experiencing. It adds that extra knowledge.”
Put that in the win column.
Learn more about Southeastern Oklahoma State University’s online M.S. in Sports Administration – Educational Leadership program.