By Claire Ainsworth
Sports Communication and Public Relations is a whole new concept for me, so going in I knew this would be an eye-opening night. I have zero experience in working in college sports so my task was to learn as much as possible. I sat behind Milla Sue Wisecarver the entirety of the game. I was able to get a sneak peak at the filming equipment for the game. The preparation for the game started with setting up the computers. There was a computer for keeping the online stats, one for twitter updates and tracking the online updates, and one for a volunteer writing a news story. Also, getting the list of starters from both teams as well as a roster from the William and Mary team. This was to make sure that any possible substitutions would be accurately recorded to Madizone. Madizone is the website on which people can view live play by play of the game. Milla Sue maintained the online play by play record of the game for Madizone. Emmy, her intern for the semester, sits next to her running the twitter for a few live updates of the game. She also has Madizone up to make sure Milla Sue’s updates are going through in a timely manner. Emmy also diagramed big plays as they happened so that Milla Sue could thoroughly explain them on Madizone. On this particular game day, there was also a volunteer from a SMAD 101 class who was writing the game day article. I learned a lot about how things were run and what happened behind the scenes at a game.
After the game was finally done, I got a chance to talk with Milla Sue about her experience in working for James Madison University. She graduated from James Madison in 1975 and has been working here ever since. She thoroughly enjoys working for the university. Admittedly, the only thing she doesn’t like is that occasionally she’ll have trouble unlocking the gates to get out at night.
While I did not get to do much more than ask questions, I learned a lot about what goes into a job like Assistant Director of Athletics Communications. Overall, I think the job seems like a fantastic one. It may seem like the same setup, but you never know what could happen at the games or what technology could decided to stop working. I think this would be a wonderful job, especially for anyone passionate about sports.