An Unusual Way To Spend My First HOUmecoming
HOUmecoming, a time where Ohio University Alumni return to Athens to relive their good old college days and see what changed to the legacy they've left behind. For the current students, it's a time to take a break from the stresses of mid-terms to attend parades, parties, football games, and various other celebratory events. For me, hOUmecoming meant work... and a lot of it to say the least.
Looking at the calendar weeks out I knew that homecoming weekend was going to be the hardest and most stressful week of my first semester in college. I had 4 midterm exams to prepare for, 2 papers to write, and 1 project to work on all within a 10 day span. My Friday night was consumed by Gridiron Glory. My Saturday was spent in the trailer behind the convocation center broadcasting the OU volleyball game with ESPN+. Work can be stressful, hard, and tiring. But for me, I enjoyed the work I did over this weekend.
Friday Night: Experiencing a different Homecoming football game with Gridiron Glory
Most students at Ohio University spent their Friday night attending homecoming festivities in Athens while I was attending homecoming 2 hours away. The Gridiron team traveled to McClain High School to watch their homecoming football game against the Jackson High School Ironmen. It took only 3 plays within Jackson's first drive to see that the Ironmen were going to trample the McClain panther's homecoming spirit. With a 31-0 score at the end of the first quarter, it was clear that Jackson had control over this game on both sides of the ball as they scored on every drive and only permitted the Panther Offense to 18 total yards on the first 16 plays.
After the first quarter blowout it was time for the Gridiron squad to pack up and finish the 180 mile round trip to get back to the studio. Usually long road trips throughout southeast Ohio are not my thing. The roller coaster like roads give me terrible car sickness when trying to edit a video. But luckily with this road-trip it was smooth coasting throughout Ohio's scenic farmlands. Since the road-trip back to the studio was 2 hours I had plenty of time to edit and I even finished my videos thirty minutes before we got back, which gave me an hour and thirty minutes to chill before the show started.
Here is the segment I filmed and edited from last weeks episode:
During the show I was in the control room helping with the broadcast for the first time. I was managing the YouTube live stream and making sure the connection and broadcast was flowing smoothly. It's a very laid back job and it was really nice to hear the behind the scenes and how the director communicates to the rest of the control room team to put the broadcast together. Apparently there were Alumni that watched the show live but they were all gone by the time I got out of the control room 30 minutes after the show ended.
Saturday: Getting to broadcast the big game for ESPN (sort of)
After getting back to the dorm at 1am on Saturday morning I took a long deserved rest and slept in on Saturday. I woke up at noon and had to be over at the convocation center to help set up for the ESPN+ broadcast of the OU Womens Volleyball game against Northern Illinois University.
This was my third production and I was running audio for the game. To say the least it was very overwhelming to look at the big picture of the production while I was in the truck, and especially when listening to the comms through the headset. I came early around 2:30 to help set up cables and set up the audio board before the 6:00 game. I always find it very interesting to see how the production works and how the producers speaks to the cameramen, the graphics guy, and replay operator. For a solid 3 hours I was in the “production truck rush”and that was the organized chaos of ~20 people all talking through the comms while frantically adjusting to the course of the game and playing their role.
Overall it was an exhausting but good experience. The game went into 5 extra points sets and there were over 250 points scored and 8 total challenges by both coaches.
An image of the audio board station taken prior to the start of the game.
Sunday: Relax Day
All of the hOUmecoming activities were finished by the time I woke up on Sunday, however, football was calling my name. Out of the 10 day span full of stress, this is the one day that I carved out of my day to destress and relax, and one of the best ways to do that was to watch my New Orleans Saints play.
The Saints beat the Baltimore Ravens in a really close win thanks to a missed extra point by the ravens kicker, Justin Tucker. The Saints quarterback, Drew Brees, passed a 500 touchdown milestone where only 3 other quarterbacks have passed that milestone and Drew is now the 3rd QB to ever beat all 32 NFL teams throughout a career. It was great to see my favorite player pass a couple huge milestones in this MVP candidate season and seeing the Saints play is something that gets me excited and help escape from a hard stretch of college work.
Overall, It was a great weekend. I wanted to interview an alumni over the weekend but I didn't see any from Gridiron or ESPN+ but on the bright sideI had a lot of fun learning and creating.
