Sports in BYU-Idaho is dying. I’m not talking about intercollegiate sports because we all know it’s not coming back anytime soon. I’m talking about intramural sports. For my senior project I focused on covering the men’s competitive soccer league to bring coverage to games and promote attendance/viewership.
Ever since I’ve been participating in sports on BYU-Idaho, students would complain about soccer not getting recognition or care as other sports on campus such as basketball, who gets broadcast recording and is the biggest event on campus. I decided to create a broadcast show where I would cover near all men’s soccer games throughout the season and make an ESPN inspired show called “Touch-line Talk.”
In the show I focused on breaking down the games so those that missed a game would watch the show and be informed and updated. I conducted press conferences and pitch-side interviews of the games and got players opinions of what went right and wrong during their games.
I filmed almost every game and edited every bit of footage and compiled them together. I made sure they all worked well with the message I would say in the anchoring script I had.
Editing, filming, interviewing, scheduling, presenting, writing were all part of my broadcast show and it has brought attendance up in soccer games as I worked with the Recreational Department on campus to keep track of all those in attendance of games.
All these recordings and filming were to lead up to the finals. We anticipate that we will have the most attendance of the men’s competitive soccer finals in 8 years. With school enrollment down, sports can be a means to increase student involvement and could increase student enrollment.