Olympic success for Sports Journalist students and alumni

TEAM GB may have arrived home after achieving Olympic Glory, but “Team Huddersfield” has also struck gold during the Rio Games.

Dozens of the University’s students and graduates from the Sports Journalism degree programme have been involved in the media coverage throughout August. 

Michelle Sammet was reporting in Rio for the IAAF
(international association of athletics federations). 

     Among a whole host of our recent graduates who were out in Brazil reporting on the games were Clare O'Donoghue (Radio 5Live producer),
     Michelle Sammet (IAAF), and Dan Etchells   (Insidethegames.biz).‌

     Meanwhile a huge team of current Sports Journalism students was recruited by BBC Sport to carry out paid work at their Salford base
     throughout the Olympics as part of the BBC’s highly acclaimed coverage, with a number of them receiving on screen credits for
     their work. This involved watching the various sport events, reporting the results, and highlighting and editing principal moments for the
     footage to be broadcast on the BBC’s Olympic channels.

     Because of the time difference between the UK and Rio, the students often worked through the night, watching all the live events
     unfolding. This gave them invaluable broadcasting experience in a major sporting spectacle and fantastic contacts in the industry, and they
     were able to see behind the scenes how one of the world’s main broadcasters covers such a prestigious event.

     2^nd year Sports Journalism student Emma Winspear recalls her Olympic experience: 

    “A logger by definition is a person who makes systematic recordings of key events, typing away at a computer imputing scores, packages, conversations and anything  important which could be used in the future. Some would say that it is a pointless job and before now I may have agreed with you. But after my summer placement at BBC Sport logging live coverage of the Rio Olympics, I and many others have had our eyes opened.

We would come into this vast office space every morning, look around in amazement and pass the odd famous face before waiting for the BBC coverage to start and then get to work. Our team rotated in 6/7 hour shifts logging the day’s action. Some of us did this while others logged individual sports, radio coverage or did chapter points for the duration of the games.

Logging the Olympics consisted of long hours watching all sports imaginable and writing down all the important events. Everything from Golf to Handball to Gymnastics to Athletics was logged by our team on any given day and we learnt a lot about sports we would have never normally watched.

Other than having our eyes opened, we also got to know the many past graduates who had been through Huddersfield’s Sports Journalism course and now work full-time at BBC Sport. They gave us a few hints and tips about how to approach our third year. Some said to simply be organised while others advised us to think ahead to life after University and job opportunities that may come our way.

All in all, the experience has made me think about what I want to do after my time at Huddersfield is over. I will certainly keep the idea of working for BBC Sport in mind, as well as consider other opportunities. Overall this experience has helped me in many ways both personally and professionally. I am sure everyone else would agree that the experience was incredibly worthwhile and thoroughly enjoyable and we cannot thank the staff at the University of Huddersfield and BBC Sport enough for arranging it for us!”

…..And it does not end there. A number of our graduate are now preparing to jet out to Rio again to cover the Paralympics.