By Charlie Hagood

When I heard about the opportunity to shadow during broadcasting for Catawba football games, I was worried if I’d be of any use. As a junior Writing major with a minor in Communications, I’ve only recently started classes dealing with Public Relations and Personal Communications. When I got there though, the people on the crew were very understanding of my confusion, and didn’t make me feel like I was a burden while helping me out. After getting everything sorted away, I was able to talk on the phone with the network to relay commercial times.

Spending time doing the relays was confusing at first, and at times I really felt stressed. But, the words of the manager of the broadcasting truck specifically helped calm me down. He told me, “nothing is personal inside the truck, emotion is just urgency.” It was especially great to have this opportunity for moments like those. I’ve worked before, but never doing something specialized like this. Seeing the different roles everyone played and the casual, but effective teamwork of the truck crew was amazing as well. I’m glad that I showed up early in the morning and was able to have that opportunity to meet the people who’ve had so many encouraging and insightful thoughts for me.

Both the time inside the truck and outside of it felt valuable, and by the time the first 11-hour day was up, I hardly even noticed that so much time had passed. I showed up the next week and felt the same way. I’m looking forward to what the next game will bring.