by Jocelyn Allen
On October 12 I job shadowed John Martin to get a glimpse of what it is like to be an assistant athletic director for communications for the James Madison University volleyball game against the Delaware Blue Hens. Before the game, he talked to me about everything that was going to happen and gave me a run down of how everything in volleyball works. During the game, he let me listen in to the headset to what he was telling everyone with the plays of the game, for example I heard him yelling “6 dig, 7 attack, 11 attack, over”. While at the volleyball game I also got a chance to witness two other positions. I got to see the computer system that JMU uses to keep track of all the statistics and the hand-written shorthand code used for backup in case the database goes down, which it did.
As soon as I got there, Martin started talking about the importance of where the numbers are on the jerseys because that plays a role on his job. I asked how they could improve the visibility of the numbers and why that mattered for his job. He told me that they should have to be light jerseys with dark numbers that have thick outlines or have the numbers on their shoulders. When the numbers are easier to see it makes it easier for them to be able to do the live and Madizone commentary because you know who made the play.
I learned that being an assistant athletic director for communications is organized chaos all the time. I also learned how difficult it is with having to be a transcriber and trying to transcribe everything that is happening as it is happening. While at the volleyball game I tried to transcribe by using the shorthand code that they keep. After trying to transcribe I compared it to what Emmie, the transcriber, had written and I only had three of the ten plays correct.
I think I could be an assistant athletic director for communications for certain sports. I do not think I could do it for sports like golf, baseball, or basketball. I could definitely be an assistant athletic director of communications for sports like National Hot Rod Association, NASCAR, motocross, or soccer. I liked the job because you never know what is going to happen. For example, the Internet went down while I was job shadowing and they did not have a way to get the score of the game on Madizone nor was the database working where JMU keeps track of all the statistics. Luckily, they had it covered because Emmie transcribes the plays by hand using short codes and they were able to get all of the statistics up by halftime.