BYU-Idaho hasn’t had intercollegiate sports for 25 years. Since Ricks College transitioned into a four-year school, becoming BYU-Idaho, the school found its new focus: purely academic.
When I started at BYU-Idaho, I chose journalism as my emphasis in communications because I am interested in sports broadcasting. Initially, I felt this goal was out of reach because of the nature of BYU-Idaho and its sole focus on academics.
Gratefully, in my studies, I’ve been able to start a sports show with BYUI Scroll known as Scroll Sidelines. Later, fellow colleagues began providing play-by-play and color commentary to BYU-Idaho intramural sports. This is how I started.
I helped those broadcasters in the winter, commentating on about seven games a week, providing in-depth play-by-play for those leagues. In the spring semester, those broadcasters I worked with weren’t interested in broadcasting the soccer and rugby leagues. This is why I decided to take on this project.
Going from ground zero, I talked with BYUI Sports advisors to help me. Then I coordinated information to the sports marketing department for ads. I received replies from about 20 different people interested in helping me.
Throughout this semester, I organized the leagues and games, scheduled broadcasters for the different games, and trained them. My commentators and I worked on roughly 54 games between the men’s and women’s soccer and rugby leagues.
I set out to accomplish this project because I noticed a problem. BYUI Sports had streamed their games for years. Each stream was filmed on iPads with no audio. Viewers can’t see a scoreboard, and without commentators, it’s hard to follow, so nobody watches.
Last fall, Jack Esplin and Austin Pace alongside their colleague Robert Harris, produced the streams for the football league for BYUI Sports. Jack and Austin provided play-by-play and color commentary, while Robert ran the camera and stream.
Later, Jack, Austin, and I, along with Noah Allen, Ethan Beecher, Tyler Pluid, and Payton Gold, planned and provided commentary for around 7 games per week for the winter basketball league. This was huge as we noticed the league grew in popularity on campus and off campus. Hundreds tuned in each week to see their friends and family members play. I also saw this as a great learning opportunity for the broadcasters.
In spring, BYUI sports planned to hold competitive soccer and rugby leagues. I found little to no interest from broadcasters for these leagues. They either weren’t interested in soccer and rugby, felt they should be paid, or were too busy.
I thought it would be unfair to pay attention to these other sports leagues and their athletes and not to those in the spring. I also knew that any opportunity to commentate is a good one.
So, this was my solution. I reached out to Trent Shippen, a faculty advisor over BYUI Sports. I told him of the problem and expressed my desire to provide broadcasts to both leagues. We met with the BYU-Idaho IT department about understanding the Wi-Fi bandwidth and coverage at the upper fields for soccer. We found the best coverage on the east side of field 1 and 2.
Next, I gave all my project information to the BYUI Sports Marketing Team. They drafted and posted ads to mybyui.edu and their social media channels. I received replies from 20 different people. I had a pizza informational party to discuss my plans for the semester. I then assembled them into a Teams chat to coordinate schedules and information.
I went into Excel and set up schedules for all four leagues and their games. Then, each week, on Monday, I took to the team’s chat to assign the broadcasters’ games. That was effective for the most part. The only problem I ran into was that around half the people in the chat never responded or commentated. I had around 10 people help throughout the semester.
Later in the semester, as a part of my project, I attended a broadcasting boot camp, hosted by SVI Media in Star Valley, Wyoming. Bill Riley, the voice of the University of Utah Utes, taught us about the importance of planning for games. It takes a full week of researching both teams, their athletes to find information for gameday. He then taught us about his spotting charts. Spotting charts are an easy-to-look-at diagram that shows all the players on the team, with their numbers and last names, with players and team notes, to help provide a good quality broadcast. He also shared with us his 10-step checklist for broadcasters. I call them the 10 commandments of play-by-play. He also sat down with us one-on-one, where he reviewed clips of our broadcasts. He then provided feedback to us.
This boot camp was the highlight of my project, as I felt like I learned more about the art of play-by-play in the five hours I was there than I did the whole basketball season.
I took this information and shared it with the broadcasters in my project. I feel like it helped them improve in their planning and delivery.
This project helped me learn valuable skills. Managing, troubleshooting, planning, scheduling, and coordinating. I learned how to run the camera and stream equipment, deal with complex problems between broadcasters and coordinators, and teach the things that I know. BYUI Sports saw an increase in viewership as well as more awareness for their soccer and rugby programs. I benefited greatly from this project, and I hope they did as well.
My schedule:
