On
Saturday October 11 the Detroit Red Wings played the Anaheim ducks at Joe Louis
Arena in Detroit. While the teams were getting dressed in their respective
locker rooms I was climbing the back stairs up to the uncharacteristically
small press box with Helene St. James.
Helene
is the Red Wings beat writer for the Detroit Free Press. She’s been working for
the paper since 1996.
After
emailing back and forth for about a month we finally settled on the Anaheim
game for me to shadow her. For me even walking in the media entrance and
picking up my media pass was amazing. I then got to walk in the bottom of the
Joe past the Zamboni entrance, past the visitor’s locker room and met Helene in
the media dining room. I was excited and
nervous. I know that I want to be in the press box for hockey games as a career
but I had never been in one until that game. It lived up to all my
expectations.
While
the teams below were warming up and fans were pouring into their general
admission seats Helene and I talked about the career she’s had and exactly what
she does for each game.
Every
game morning she attends the morning skate and after writes a summary of what
to expect that night. During the game she writes a detailed outline of what
exactly happens during the game. She details penalties, goals, and assists.
Also during the game she writes her story. During the game she also gets an
idea who she wants to interview after the game and what questions she wants to
ask them.
During the game I
just sat beside Helene and watched her and the other journalists work. Helene
seemed to know everyone in the box. At one point Kris Draper, who had been in
an adjoining room with Mickey Redmond and Ken Daniels broadcasting for Fox
Sports Detroit, walked by and stopped to say hello to Helene. As he was walking
away he said hello to me as well. I grew up watching Draper play for the Red
Wings and so for him to see me and say hello to me was pretty amazing. I wasn’t really doing anything during the
game but it was still a great experience just to be in that atmosphere and get
a feel for what I would be doing in the future.
One tip she gave
me was that as a reporter you technically cannot root for one team or another
but you root for the game to end in regulation. If the game goes into overtime
and/or a shootout it messes with the 10:25pm deadline. That night all the
reporters were big Ryan Getzlaf of Anaheim fans as he scored the game’s winning
goal with about 20 seconds left in regulation.
My
favorite part of the whole night was when we basically ran to the locker room
after the game for the post-game comments from the players and coach. Luke
Glendening, Niklas Kronwall, Gustav Nyquist, Henrik Zetterberg and Coach Mike
Babcock all came out to speak to the reporters in the locker room. Helene was
the most vocal one, asking most of the questions. I was surprised to see how
few reporters were actually in the room. There were only about seven of them. I
was the youngest person in the room by about five years and aside from Helene
the only woman in the room. After Coach Babcock was done speaking, Helene went
back to the media dining room to add the quotes into her story and add the
finishing touches before sending it in.
When she went to
finish her story I left her to write and walked back to meet my dad who was
waiting for me outside. As I passed the visitor’s locker room on my way out,
Anaheim’s Ryan Kesler walked right in front of me. I realized I could be in
this profession when I didn’t try to talk to him or ask him for a picture. It may
sound like a small, obvious thing but
for me not to ask for anything from one of the game’s stars, or even cheer when
the Red Wings scored that night, was a big accomplishment for me and I knew I
could handle the professionalism that has to come with the job.
Shadowing Helene St. James was so exciting for me. I learned a lot and all my expectations were met and were exceeded.
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