Playing the Field: Kat Vosters

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Courtesy of UW Communications

In Playing the Field, we profile women who are making an impact in the world of sports, either in competition or behind the scenes. For this installment, we spoke with Kat Vosters, the director of basketball operations for the University of Wisconsin’s men’s basketball team.

Not many recent graduates can say with absolutely certainty that they have their dream job. For Kat Vosters, however, being the director of basketball operations with the Wisconsin men’s basketball team is both everything she has ever wanted and something she never knew she could do six years ago.

Arriving on campus as a freshman, Vosters was familiar with a member of the men’s basketball staff with whom she’d gone to Verona high school. When he told her they were looking for student managers, she jumped at the chance to become part of the program she’d been a fan of since childhood.

Vosters, 24, graduated in 2013 and accepted a job in Arizona, but deferred her start date until September. In a lot of ways, she was ready to strike out and move on, but she also harbored a hope that she could continue in sports administration. In June, the department lost a video coordinator. Some shifting within the department left the program coordinator role open and men’s basketball coach Bo Ryan offered it to her. One year later, when her mentor left the basketball ops role to pursue a coaching career, Ryan offered Vosters the opportunity.

“It's been crazy busy and crazy fast and it’s been awesome,” she said. “It’s exactly what I wanted to do. It’s just kind of crazy how fast I was able to get my dream job. When I came to school here, when I started being a manager, my current job is what I looked forward to doing, but I never actually thought I had a chance at doing.”

On paper, Vosters’ job description includes managing budgets, coordinating team travel and scheduling both the team and Coach Ryan.

In reality, it’s a lot less formal and a lot more challenging than that. No two days are ever the same. Vosters described it as “making sure every piece of the puzzle fits together.” She’s the proverbial firefighter, taking care of things as they arise and doing whatever job that comes up, whether that’s helping clean the sweat off the court or setting up media and fan appearances for Coach Ryan.

“You get into a lot of situations where you don’t necessarily know how to deal with it, but I think being a manager really prepared me to be able to look at situations or problems differently and be able to approach a plan of action much quicker than I would have if I didn’t have that experience,” she said.

Vosters acknowledges the rarity of a woman in her position but admits that mostly she tries to not let gender play a part in her day-to-day life. The job comes with a lot of responsibility, including the wrangling of 16 rather large basketball players and one notoriously animated coach. But Vosters has never felt anything but comfort and welcome with the Wisconsin basketball program.

“I think the people who notice (my gender) are the people who I don’t work with every day,” she said. “Coach Ryan doesn’t treat me any differently. Our players don’t treat me any differently. That’s what I kind of strive for. I knew that if I wanted to move forward, I couldn’t be seen as any differently so I always made a point to carry the heavy equipment bags and not let the guys carry them for me. The second a woman starts backing off from certain duties, that’s when you allow yourself to be looked at differently ... I don’t think I’ve ever allowed anyone to treat me a certain way. I don’t think I’ve ever really had that problem. I’m just thankful our coaches have never made it an issue.”

Planning for all the details of a team road trip usually takes Vosters up to a month. From arranging airplanes and busses and drives, to scheduling practice court time at the host school and arranging for meals and lodging, there are many small, moving parts to coordinate.

When the basketball team had airplane problems after leaving Maryland at the end of February, every one of the skills Vosters has acquired were put to the test and all her carefully laid plans were moot.

After taking off more than 90 minutes later than scheduled due to the aircraft door not closing properly, Vosters was napping when she was wakened to be told the plane was making an emergency landing in Pittsburgh. Immediately she knew the team wouldn’t be able to make it back to Madison that night. Less than 10 minutes later, their plane was on the ground and Vosters was too busy worrying about all the details she had no plan or logistics for to even have time to be terrified.

Where she’d normally have a binder-full of contact information, Vosters and the operations staff were working somewhat blind to coordinate lodging for their traveling party. They ended up staying in three different hotels and Vosters admits she didn’t sleep that night, spending her whole night attempting to find a new aircraft to get them home, arranging late check outs in case there was more flying difficulties and procuring breakfast for her groups spread across three hotels.

“It was everything I really do for a regular trip, but in an hour, with no information,” she said. “That was definitely a challenge but it ended up goes as smoothly as it could. I have good helpers, but that’s what our job is. Just take care of what’s in front of us as quickly and smoothly as possible.”

Despite the occasional chaos, Vosters can’t imagine herself anywhere else.

“This is my dream job,” she said. “It just happened really fast. It’s kind of scary to me because you have these life goals and dreams and things you want to do and I’m 24 and I’m already doing it, so what’s next? I just never know. I don’t think anybody knows what tomorrow’s going to bring. I plan as much as I can, but I don’t plan too far ahead just because you never know. I think sometimes people can be disappointed by having a plan and it not working out, so I try to go day-to-day.

“I don’t have any plans to not be doing my job any time soon.”