I will never forget my time in London this summer. I made many incredible friends, confirmed to myself that I am in the correct profession and witnessed sporting history. It all came to an abrupt end this morning as the Ball State students left on the bus to Heathrow.
Despite only knowing the majority for a matter of weeks, I was sad to see them go and look forward to working with them again in the future.
Chris Taylor, Alex Cartman, myself and fellow British student Aaron Wise had discussed the prospect of University of Worcester students going to Ball State University to complete a module and experience what they had to offer at BSU. A course which vastly differs from Worcester’s course for a number of reasons.
Firstly: Opportunity. The ideology of sport in America differs vastly from how we regard sport in Britain and as a result of sport being taken more seriously, there are many more opportunities for sports journalism. For instance, almost every high school and college game is broadcast on television, each of these games will need commentators, videographers and photojournalists as well as people to write match reports.
The students we worked alongside from BSU getting vital experience towards their respective degrees. I am not saying that there are no opportunities to do this in Britain, as there are if you apply yourself but there is no where near the same scale or responsibility bestowed on student and trainee journalists. There is almost no chance that you would see a student journalist presenting or commentating on a league one or two football game, whereas in the States Pat Boylan, Brandon Pope and Josh Blessing - who I worked closely with the last month, all have positions as presenters. It seemed to be the norm to get experience like this.
In our first few days in London back in July did not go well, lack of stories and access to events were a big issue. However, when you consider we only had 6 weeks to prepare ourselves, compared to the year and a half that the Ball State students had – we haven’t done too badly. We have been to several events including getting inside the Olympic village, publishing a number of stories, gaining access to the Team GB house, met the leader of the GB Ambition program and completed a number of interviews with athletes and their families.
Not only that, we also went live on radio in Indianapolis on a station called 102.5 WMDH which was broadcast to over one million people. All of this whilst working with Ball State sports link on their video production doing stand ups and updates, something I’ve never had the chance to do before. So, despite the scepticism of the first few days where we did not get much done at all, we stayed positive and really made the most of this opportunity. Without a doubt, this was partly down to how friendly and open the BSU students had been in welcoming us into what was effectively their project. Kait Buck immediately gave us idea and showed us outlets that we could publish our work in.
Chris Taylor, Alex Cartman and John Battuelo who I was staying in a flat with, not only showed me their projects but also helped me with my own. They did this by helping to record my interviews, fine tune my stories and generally support me. I have created a short video to give my thanks to all the lecturers and organisers involved in the trip as I am extremely grateful for all the hard work they have put into this project.
Emily Theis - assistant design editor at Ball State Daily News came up with the idea and will be showing them the montage of everyones videos edited together once they get back to America.
However, there were, and always were going to be, ways we could have improved. The most obvious being that we needed much more time to plan for an event of this size. BSU had a team of 40 student journalists from all facets of journalism – PR students, feature writers, photographers and video editors. Whereas we had just 5 students journalists – two of whom didn’t show up and one that only came for two days. This left myself and Aaron as the only British contributions to BSU at the games.
Three things which I will start to work towards from tomorrow is becoming the sports editor for the Worcester University newspaper – the Voice and also contacting Youthcom radio about becoming a presenter. Lastly I will create an online portfolio for my work to showcase myself to future employers. I have also decided to change my dissertation to a video based project – much like the videos created by Ball State students. As I have learnt a lot from them over the summer. Combined with my previous knowledge from A level, I feel I could now produce something that will get me a high grade. Matching the quality of the BSU videos will definitely be a task, but it is a goal I will set myself. Although I may have limitations in terms of equipment. My dissertation will now look at the the legacy of British Basketball after the Olympics, focusing on opportunity, participation, promotion and expansion.
After a meeting with my course leader, she informed that the GB Women's basketball team will be holding training camp at the University of Worcester, this will provide me with a great opportunity to get my footage and interviews. They will be based at the new 1,500 seat arena which is due to be opened in January 2012 and will be home to the BBL team Worcester Wolves.
The arena is located on Chequers Lane, Worcester, this is the computer construction of what it will look like:
"The Worcester Arena will enable the University to offer unique services to local sports clubs in the community as well as elite and professional athletes around the Midlands. With spacious, high-tech facilities it can look to develop more innovative schemes, whilst also providing a venue that will attract a great range of spectator events to the city. Currently, the University of Worcester provides Worcester County Cricket Club, Worcester Wolves, Aston Villa FC, Birmingham City FC and West Bromwich Albion FC with support in the areas of performance analysis, fitness and nutrition advice."
To your left is a video by Taylor Bussick that sums up our journey this summer.
And beneath is a recently published hour long Olympic special was released by Ball State sports link. The film was aired live on Fox College sports and parts of it were shown on EPSN. Behind the scenes footage and information is available in previous posts on this blog.
I'm now in the process of applying to a masters degree at Ball State which I hope to do in 2013 after my third and final year at the University of Worcester. So if all goes to plan, hopefully I'll be at Indiana this time next year.
Thank you for taking the time to read my blog, this post is dedicated to the staff members of BSU who made this opportunity possible. Please comment below with any feedback or questions about the trip.
You can find me on Twitter on: @JJeffrey7, by email on james.jeffrey5@btinternet.com and on Flickr on http://www.flickr.com/photos/jamesjeffrey7/
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