Little Tidbit About PR for Sports Information

Working for Al Weston, the Sports Information Director, hasn’t been easy, but it’s been quite the learning experience. As we began working with sports last semester in PR writing, Al Weston became our liaison between mass communication and athletics. As his student assistant, I did a variety of jobs. As far as print goes, I wrote a couple short press releases for the Athletics website, as well as created numerous table tents and game programs for various sports. On the non-print side of my practicum, I worked all of the GC&SU basketball games this semester as well as a few softball games.

My hours were sporadic, except for my usual Mondays and Wednesdays from 3:15 to 5:15. Other than my usual hours, I worked on game days. Setting up for the games began at about 4, and the ladies games began at 5:30, the men’s at 7:30. By the time cleaning was done I was out of the gym by about 10.

Leading up to a game on the day of, there is a great deal of preparation to be done. I The screen between the score boards is a color screen and message board. One of my pre-game jobs is to make updates in the computer program which corresponds with the board. After updating the slides that cover topics such as upcoming games, the athlete of the week, and the team’s rankings in the Peach Belt Conference, I take the wireless router which connects the computer and the board without a wire and I transfer the information to update the board so that event goers will be aware of the current information. Also before games, I created game programs which include statistics for both teams, rankings in their conferences, individual player positions and statistics, and information about coaches. The programs must be placed on the information table located at the front of the venue, as well as be readily available at the court-side media table for announcers to use in their broadcasts. I create a box of goodies such as Frisbees and t-shirts for the cheerleaders. I usually wrapped up about 30 Bobcat t-shirts into throw-able balls using rubber bands , for the cheer leaders to throw to the crowd.

I learned a lot working the athletic events. At the basketball games, I ran the score board and the message board, picked random crowd members for the trivia question and Frisbee competition during time outs as well as conducted the Frisbee competitions. I must add that finding people who are willing to volunteer to answer a trivia question is not as easy as you would think. People seemed so reluctant to answer a simple sports question in front of a crowd.

Whenever something went awry such as a printer out of ink, cords disconnected, or anything of that nature, I was Al’s go to girl to fix the problem, keeping me on my toes and nearby at all times.

If I could do it again, I probably would not have picked this practicum because I will most likely never work in sports, however the practicum did cultivate a greater appreciation and enjoyment of basketball within me. Working with two of Alan’s graduate assistants, Katie Parker and Tyler Peck, was a good experience for me. I learned a lot from them while working on projects. Researching opponents was essential to creating the documents which I completed for athletics, and I learned how to work with the programs QuarkXPress as well as Adobe Pagemaker. I would reccommend this internship for a student who has an immense love for sports, or would like to work in sports information.