Ali Azeem is a rising junior that serves as the Chief Logistics Officer. Azeem never played rugby, but started off handling game film for the team. After demonstrating his competency and commitment to the club, he quickly moved up to become the first chief officer that had never been a player. Azeem is just the beginning of the club-wide effort to recruit skilled non-player officers and provide students with opportunities to gain real-world job experience.
In May, Azeem was tasked with planning travel accommodations for the team’s six day trip to the Collegiate Rugby Championship (CRC) in New Orleans, LA.
“Logistics is a vague word, and a vague department. As Chief Logistics Officer for Michigan Rugby, my territory covers a lot of the space between Publicity, Finance, and Community [the other departments]. Though I personally deal with travel and reserving fields for practices and games, my department takes care of film, analytics, and equipment as well.
Traveling for the CRC was a unique situation to plan for. Typically I spend several days researching hotels, trying to find relatively low costs without compromising quality. This trip, however, we were required to stay in one of the four hotels sponsored by the tournament. Sticking to the strict time schedule instead proved to be one of the biggest issues. Captain George Janke and I spent long hours planning the gameday schedule down to the minute to stay in line with what the CRC required of us. Another unique situation was looking into New Orleans sightseeing. We don’t have time to see campuses when we play away games, much less plan tourist activities, so this was a new experience for me. I enjoyed finding places to eat and walk around in the French Quarter. I tried my best to give our team a sense of New Orleans culture, like spending time on Bourbon Street and eating at some local restaurants. I’m fairly used to finding the nearest Olive Garden or Culver’s to our destination, so I appreciated looking into places outside the set routine. It was certainly a lot of work, but things went smoothly, and I’m happy that our season ended with a logistically sound trip. Overall, though my work is done mostly behind the scenes, I know I’m doing my part in ensuring that we’re fully prepared every time we take the field.”
