Two years ago, Ryann Kristmanson was at a crossroads. After being on the UBC women’s basketball team for two years, she was abruptly forced to reconsider her future.
“I came [to UBC] for basketball. I was recruited here. But I had a career-ending injury,” she said.
In a moment, it seemed like she would have to leave everything she had known on campus behind. The injury would separate her from her teammates and coaches — her friends. But as she was pondering the future, a new roster spot opened on the team for her. Not as a player, but as the team’s social media coordinator.
“It kind of just fell in my lap to be honest,” she said. “The transition was weird because it was fast. I didn’t really get to say goodbye to my basketball career as I was starting this .... But I loved it enough that I wanted to keep pursuing it.”
For Kristmanson, basketball was so crucial that, despite not being able to play, she still wanted to be a part of it. She isn’t the only one.
Across campus, there are countless others in roles similar to Kristmanson. Whether they write articles, take photos, shoot videos or generally contribute to the public promotion of sport, they all fit under the umbrella of “sports media.”
With 26 varsity teams at UBC, countless hours go into showcasing the athleticism of the school’s hundreds of student-athletes, across a wide variety of sports. Or, if you’re Jeff Sargeant — UBC Athletics’s communications and media relations coordinator — you might cover all sports.
Sargeant and his team are tasked with producing media for all UBC varsity programs — a balancing act that is no small feat.
"It’s a lot of student athletes and a lot of programs,” he said. “We want to give as much as we can, but we’re only human, we can only have so much time and so much budget .... A big part of our challenge is trying to get our athletes in as much focus as we can.”
"A lot of people will see us and our support staff at games, at events, but that's just a snapshot of what we do."
Even those in media roles attached only to one team have plenty to juggle. Malika Agarwal, the media, communications and partnerships manager for UBC’s men’s and women’s swim teams, knows this well.
“The joke around deck is I do everything but swim,” she said.
For Agarwal, providing media support to the team can mean something different each day.
“I think it is an atypical job in that way,” she said. “Sometimes it’s running [and] grabbing a box from the Athletics department, or sometimes it will be sitting down and writing copy for an email [to] alumni supporters.”
On top of these responsibilities, many in-house media staff at UBC are also full-time students. While Agarwal recently graduated, Kristmanson must balance her role with classes.
“It’s definitely a full-time job, especially being one person doing it,” Kristmanson said. “It’s such a great opportunity because I can try it all. I get to have full creative control. But at the same time ... it’s a lot to balance with school as well.”
Multitasking across assignments and ideas is just one of the many elements of media that goes unseen by the public, Sargeant explained. While media is inherently a front-facing job, there’s plenty going on behind-the-scenes to make the content possible.
“It’s a lot of long hours .... On a Friday, Saturday night, we’re here well past midnight, and then right back at it pretty early the next day,” he said. “A lot of people will see us and our support staff at games, at events, but that’s just a snapshot of all that we do.”
Attention to detail often goes unnoticed. The time spent with a critical eye, ensuring anything going out to the public looks smooth and polished, can’t always be seen in the final product, Agarwal said.
“Every aspect of it — all the aesthetic components to it, making sure that it represents your team and your athletes in an accurate light — I think is more difficult than people maybe give it credit for,” she said.
All this work begs the question — why go into sports media? For Sargeant, it’s simple.
“Do what you love,” he said. “I really enjoyed my time focusing on news as well, but I also had the opportunity ... to do some hockey broadcasting on the side .... It was essentially just following my passion.”
That sense of passion — viewing the tasks of sports media not as additional responsibilities, but as exciting opportunities — is key in the field. Because creating media, in any form, is a labour of love.
Perhaps the best example of this comes from UBC’s men’s volleyball team. This year, their media team took their game to another level, creating Taking Flight, a crisply-produced, in-depth YouTube documentary series following the team throughout their season.
It’s an exceptionally unique project, and it only exists because of the efforts of first-year student Cole Joliat.
While head coach Mike Hawkins had previously considered the idea of a documentary series, it was Joliat who pushed to make the project a reality. From before Hawkins even met Joliat, his passion for volleyball was clear, with Joliat reaching out to Hawkins before even arriving at UBC.
“He was persistent, but not in a nagging way. It was kind of like, ‘Hey, I’m probably not suited to be on the team, but I’m going to UBC anyway .... So I just want to help in any way possible,’” Hawkins said.
That persistence eventually led to an invite into a T-Birds practice, and after meeting with Hawkins, Joliat landed a role with the squad. Joliat pitched the docu-series about the team in that first meeting, and upon hearing the idea, Hawkins was ecstatic.
“I remember looking at him being like, ‘Oh my God, let’s do it,’” said Hawkins. “[From then], he was there every single day .... he’s just one of those guys who ... is like an unsung hero to what we do.”
“I think sports media and storytelling surrounding sports is one of the most incredible ways that you can bring people joy and hope,”
One reason why Hawkins is so enthusiastic about the documentary is because, while the project itself is immaterial, it still tangibly benefits the team. The media’s contributions may not be as immediately obvious as some of volleyball’s other staff, but their efforts to tell the story of the program still improves the team — particularly in recruiting.
“[When] people want to come to UBC, people want to know about the program,” Hawkins said. “I can’t tell you how many ... parents [of recruits] are like, ‘Hey, we watched every episode of the doc. So when you reached out to our son, we feel like we already know the team.’”
Not only do the efforts of Joliat and the rest of the media team help bring in talent, but they can also help lift up the talent already in the building.
“I think it’s an incredible source of pride,” Hawkins said. “If it’s something like a doc, where you get to see yourself, or you get to talk about how you feel as a part of the program, that just really strengthens the bonds within our team.”
Taking Flight may be abstract in its team deliverables, but its community building in and outside of the sports circle makes it more than just a video. Wins and losses are important, but they aren’t what makes sport special — the people and stories do. After all, those elements are what initially brought Kristmanson into the field.
“Honestly, in the end, it doesn’t really feel like work. I really enjoy it, and I get to spend time with these girls who I’ve known for so long and who are my closest friends,” she said.
The sentiment extends to someone in media relations, like Sargeant.
“We get to know our student athletes, we know our coaches that we work with very closely ... we wanna see them succeed,” he said. “That’s what really drives us, is to put them in lights and get their accolades and get the attention that they rightly deserve.”
While sports media ranges from making Instagram posts to conducting post-game interviews and everything in between, it’s all in service of a greater goal: serving people and telling a story.
“I think sports media and storytelling surrounding sports is one of the most incredible ways that you can bring people joy and hope,” said Agarwal. “That storytelling aspect of it, it’s what pushes people to want to be better and do better. Any role model you have, you look up to them because of their stories and I think sport is no different.”
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