By: Tyler Copan
For my job shadowing assignment, I attended the women’s soccer game on Sunday, September 30th when the Dukes faced Hofstra. For the day, I shadowed Mrs. Milla Sue Wisecarver, the Assistant Athletics Communications Director and the Sports Information Director for men’s and women’s soccer, women’s basketball, and lacrosse. From this experience, I learned a lot about what it takes to prepare for and run a successful sporting event.
The game on Sunday started at 1:00 p.m. and I was told to arrive an hour early so I got to the stadium at Noon. When I found Mrs. Wisecarver in the press box of the University Park stadium, she was busy getting the lineups and the stat sheets ready for the game. Before every game, there is a lot of set up that needs to take place in the press box for the game to run smoothly. During pre-game preparations, Mrs. Wisecarver enters both teams’ rosters into the computer to be used later, pulled up the other CAA soccer games that were being played that day on another computer, and used her radio to stay in constant contact with her employees to make sure everyone was where they needed to be and knew what their job was.
Once the game started, things seemed to calm down a little bit. When I asked Mrs. Wisecarver if things were constantly busy during the games, she told me “there is a ton of stuff to do right before and right after the game. During the game I sit in the press box and record stats for all the things that happen on the field.” During the game, anything that happened on the field, from substitutions to goals scored, Mrs. Wisecarver took what happened and inputted the information into a program on her computer. This program automatically uploaded the information from the game onto JMU’s athletic website and also to a secure site that only members of the press can get into.
After the game, Mrs. Wisecarver had to rush around the stadium to get a few important things done. Before she left the press box, she had to write her post game story to be uploaded on the website immediately. This was basically a summary of the whole game in case fans or members of the press missed it. Then, she had to get the stats that she recorded signed by the officials for the game and make any changes that need to be made to them. After that, it was time to close everything down and make sure everything got put away so we could go home.
Overall, the job of Assistant Athletics Communications Director and Sports Information Director seems to be pretty hectic. Mrs. Wisecarver says she loves the job but it takes a lot of dedication because you have to work a lot of nights and weekends, especially when the sports she is in charge of are in season. Although the job Mrs. Wisecarver does seems to be an interesting one, I do not think it would be a viable career choice for me since it seems to be way too repetitive and boring. However, I do believe this was an excellent experience for me to see a little bit of what it is like to work in sports and the experience definitely met my expectations.
