Understanding the experiences of sport management student leaders: The case of the Emeritus Memorial Golf Tournament and Auction

This exploratory study investigated both the challenges that sport management student leaders faced when planning and managing a course-based event and the skills they developed from their experiences. The case used for this study was the Emeritus Memorial Golf Tournament and Auction, a recurring student-led event at Georgia Southern University. Seven student leaders (five formal leaders and two informal leaders) from these courses were interviewed following event completion, with Kolb’s experiential learning theory employed as a lens of inquiry. The study focuses primarily on experiential learning from a Facility and Event Management course with a scaffolded assignment structure, whose students organized and operated a golf tournament and auction. Study findings revealed a dynamic relationship between the challenges that student leaders faced and the competencies that they developed. Through the scaffolded assignments and event-management experiences, students acknowledged an ability to learn from the challenges they encountered, developing their communication, event-planning, strategic-management, and problem-solving skills. Findings suggest that student leaders’ development of management-related skills was most influenced by the fourth and fifth tenets of experiential learning theory.