“It was cool to know that Darius and Sean want to do what we’re doing too,” said Lyman, a senior in the program. “Even though we’re the ones calling their plays, they’re like us too. Eventually they hope to be broadcasting as well.”
All the while, there were experiential learning moments galore for the sports media and analytics students. They were not just students, but credentialed professionals by the ACC.
Chris Hirons, a junior, learned what life on the go can be like as a journalist. He covered the ACC Women’s Basketball Tournament earlier in Greensboro, North Carolina, then traveled north to Brooklyn with the rest of the crew, before returning home to Blacksburg and writing eight articles in 10 days.
The experience led Alves to recall a project in the media writing class of Dale Jenkins, a School of Communication advanced instructor who had assigned his students to interview a professional in a career they wanted to pursue. In Alves’ interview with a Pittsburgh Steelers reporter, he learned that in the profession, you don’t have time to cheer.
“When Darius Maddox hit the game-winner, I just had to tweet and post and do all that stuff,” said Alves, a junior and a men’s basketball beat reporter for 3304 Sports, the multimedia platform for student sports journalism at Virginia Tech. “I was in the zone. A few minutes later, once the broadcast had ended and I was going to the press room, it just hit me: Holy cow, Darius Maddox just hit a game-winner to save Tech’s season!”
Wyatt Krueger, a senior, said he learned more about the profession in a matter of a few days than he had in the previous years combined by diving head first into the action. He was on the receiving end of legendary Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim’s ire for asking a probing question, a common occurrence for sports journalists at press conferences.
Krueger also pursued an intriguing enterprise story right down the road in a tumultuous part of the city at a homeless shelter that was once the hospital birthplace of Michael Jordan and Mike Tyson. While access inside the shelter was denied, Krueger still talked to a few residents outside the facility to hear their stories.
“Bill Roth always stresses getting out of your comfort zone and trying new things,” Krueger said. “I just wanted to take advantage of as many opportunities as I could while I was in Brooklyn. We don’t get that many chances like that in life.”
While all students were there to provide coverage for all games throughout the tournament, regardless of who was playing in the championship, Virginia Tech’s surprise appearance in the final made it so much sweeter. In the end, the Hokies were crowned champions with a 82–67 victory over Duke.
“I was lucky enough to be the one on the call for the championship, which was a surreal moment,” Lyman said. “I could see the clock ticking down, and the confetti started spraying. Never in a million years would I have imagined I’d be the one who got to call it. There were probably four people in that stadium who were calling play-by-play when the Hokies won their first ACC Championship, and I was one of them.”
Along the way, the students had an impromptu meeting at a deli with ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips, who offered them insights into working in sports media.
