Lucky Byas ’16 has a penchant for problem solving.
Take, for example, her business analytics internship with Spurs Sports & Entertainment (SS&E) that began in January 2015. After a sport management internship panel, Byas was contacted by the organization’s marketing manager, who tasked her with constructing a profile of SS&E fans and sifting through TV ratings of all their games, among other projects. With limited direction, Byas analyzed ratings throughout the games and how ratings changed depending on factors like the opponent or the time of game.
To aid the SS&E analytics department, Byas also evaluated surveys sent out to fans, employees, and season ticket holders. For years, surveys had been disseminated, but the department had not capitalized on the aggregated information. Byas sensed an opportunity and began to streamline the surveys, making sure that only necessary questions were being asked and were well crafted.
“Dissecting this information was really interesting and one of my favorite projects,” Byas says. “At the end of the internship, I was able to present my findings to a room of executives and we used survey responses to make real-life recommendations.”
One of those recommendations was to add more personnel directing traffic at the parking egress. Byas says she felt proud when she noticed newly hired attendants guiding the egress at a Spurs basketball game she attended this semester. Byas, a math major and double minor in philosophy and sport management, ended her SS&E internship in August when facing an 18-hour semester.
Now, during the final semester of her senior year, Byas has found a new challenge to work on as a business analytics intern at KSAT 12. Since January, she has been collecting data of the news broadcasts and studying the specifics of each story, from how long it runs to what genre it falls under to how many people are watching. The internship also doubles as her senior math project and Byas inputs the data into programs like MATLAB and R.
“This internship is great, because they really value my input and I’m once again working with executives,” Byas says. “Everything that I enjoyed about my SS&E project is also in this one.”
When she isn’t crunching data at her internship, or leading Trinity social sorority Gamma Chi Delta as president, Byas is winning awards like Outstanding Senior in Sport Management for 2016. She follows in the footsteps of recipients such as Grant Rosen ’15, Brooke Sanchez ’14, Brianna Tammaro ’13, Weston Haaf ’12, and Tayler Malloy ’11. Byas was one of four seniors in the sport management minor to be nominated and she was selected by a committee.
A self-described “sports purist,” Byas names business administration professor Jacob Tingle, also chair of the sport management minor, as her greatest mentor. She says every opportunity she’s had in sport can be traced back to him and that he’s believed in her since “Day One.” In addition to her internships at SS&E and KSAT, Byas has also interned with the San Antonio Missions Diamond Concessions, the San Antonio Missions Baseball franchise, as well as Trinity University Baseball. Additionally, Byas was among the inaugural group of sport management students to travel to London on a faculty-led study abroad experience. Upon graduation, she will become a Capgemini staff consultant.
Goal-oriented and fueled by campus involvement, Byas came to Trinity from Fort Worth. She took her first sport management class as a sophomore and has loved every class she’s taken since. Byas says that once she heard about the Outstanding Senior award, she made it a personal mission to achieve that honor.
“It was a nice moment of achievement,” Byas says. “I felt relieved when I accomplished this goal, because professors like Dr. Tingle know how hard I’ve worked in all of these experiences.”
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