It was a chance job offer after someone had dropped out and I readily accepted it even with only 3 weeks to go. What an opportunity! Although there are 56 members of the Commonwealth of Nations, there are 72 CWG associations who will participate.
They are fully inclusive since with athletes competing with a disability. In Birmingham there were to be approximately athletes and team officials competing in events in 20 sports. I was to be based at the NEC in Birmingham and manage two halls of sport β weight lifting and Badminton. We were all managed by a cluster manager and I soon learnt the importance of balancing management and helping day to day but not micro-managing.
Also looking after oneself was key; getting enough sleep was significant in order to keep showing up for 10days without a degradation of performance. Everyone else had been in their VMM role for a week prior to my arrival which meant they had a good understanding of the job role, the supporting computer systems and the venue.
I had 24hrs to learn it all. The organisation was incredible- the amount of work involved; the amount of teams of people from the athletes to the press, to the traffic, to the catering, to the workforce volunteers, to the security and finally to the medical. My first few days were full on especially as we had to bump in unpack everything and get established as well. Day to day my role was responsible for supporting and directing a multi-disciplinary volunteer workforce consisting of doctors, nurses, first aiders, paramedics, physiotherapists and massage therapists for the fields of play FOP and athlete medical rooms.
The NEC was open from hrs to hrs so there were two of us in the role in which I carried out the evening shift from to The athletes arrived in the middle of my first week and were just training and getting used to their arenas. I did quite a bit of physio especially on athletes and officials that had travelled a distance to get here.
