Keaton Young ’25: A Helping Hand
Facilities Supervisor builds leadership skills while managing daily Operations & Events at the Student Rec Center
Before the first person walks through the doors of the Student Recreation Center, someone’s already made sure they’re open. From early morning unlocks to managing fire drills and full-scale events, Keaton Young ’25 keeps things running behind the scenes as a student supervisor for Rec Sports operations & events.
Clocking hours before most students are even awake, Young plays a key role in the daily operations and events at the Student Recreation Center.
“I come in normally for openings [and] we unlock all the doors,” he said. “But then during a regular shift, we help around with what’s needed, unlock lockers, and manage the events here at the Rec Center. So, everything in any of the rooms that people pay for, we’re helping out in any way that we can.”
He became a supervisor for Operations & Events in January of 2024 and has been growing as a leader ever since. Whether he’s walking around the facility or overseeing the membership desk, he’s equipped with leadership and interpersonal skills to go right along with his Rec Sports polo and walkie.
“It gave me a bunch more responsibility in the Rec Center, doing a lot more walking around,” Young said. “I get to meet a lot of different people from different areas, hang out with them, talk to them, and then provide my best leadership toward them.”
Being a supervisor means that Young has to balance managing other student staff while also supporting his professional staff.
“With professional staff, I’m more of just helping out,” he said. “If they ask me to do anything, I’m there to do it, but then they’re also my friends too, so I can go up there [and] talk to them with any concerns that I have.”
Feedback plays a large role in Young’s day as a facilities supervisor. He takes patron concerns to his professional staff and offers feedback himself to the student staff he helps oversee.
“With our student staff, we give a lot of feedback to everybody,” he said. “And then with the patrons, if they say something to us, I always make it a point to let my professional staff know. So I think feedback is very important for our job with the patrons and then our student staff as well.”
Young’s initiative and communication across all levels result in continuous improvement throughout the facility.
“Not only does he take on a significant number of hours, but he also contributes to the hiring, interviewing, and training of new supervisors,” said Emily Patterson, the program director of operations, reservations, and events. “His reliability, initiative, and leadership consistently set a strong example for his peers, and his dedication has made a lasting impact on our operations.”
But these skills don’t come automatically. In a facility like the Student Rec Center, with so many different moving parts, sometimes situations come up where Young has to think on his feet and trust his instincts.
“There was one time where it was really busy,” he said. “There were a lot of people here, and then the fire alarm went off, and I didn’t think I’d be able to handle all those people, getting everybody out, since I am the person in charge of that. But, I made it through perfectly fine. It was one of our fastest evacuations, so I surprised myself doing that.”
Learning how to handle different situations that come up while operating the Student Rec Center has been a constant point of growth for Young. When renovations started this past spring and closures affected many areas of the facility, Young took charge of optimizing routes and managing patron impact.
“It impacted us at the very beginning, because the building is kind of split in half,” he said. “But we were able to adapt pretty quickly and change how we do things — how we get across to the other side of the Rec Center, and how we’re having to deal with patrons. It was a little bit of a challenge at first, but we were able to manage it by asking our professional staff what we can do better, and giving them some advice based on what we’ve seen.”
Ultimately, the helping-hand attitude that Young has developed during his time with Rec Sports operations & events will serve him long after graduation. “I’ve learned a lot,” he said. “Dealing with a lot of different people, a lot of different conflict resolutions, managing that — especially in a busy place like the Rec Center — is very hard, and you have to work through it. So that has taught me a lot that I can bring with me later in life.”
