Monday, Feb. 7th:
📝 This new week is off to a great start after a last minute story came through. Got time for a story about a story?
Ok here it goes.
I woke up to an email from a colleague who’d been cleared into the mixed zone (think post-game interviews) for the USA versus Switzerland women’s hockey game. His text simply said “Got the sound.” He was referring to an interview with a hockey player from San Diego playing on the Swiss team. Team USA dominated 8 – 0, and my colleague was at the game to talk with American players about the blow out. But I wanted him to find this other American, Keely a 23-year-old woman from Scripps Ranch who has devoted countless hours to a game and passion passed down to her from her later father. Now I just gave you the punchline to the story, but I didn’t know any of these details when I left my room this morning and headed downstairs for a 9:15 a.m. throat swab and 9:20 a.m. bus to the International Broadcast Center (IBC).
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I think I referenced how curler John Shuster, who I interviewed a few days back, casually mentioned meeting a San Diegan at opening ceremony. He said her name is “Keely” and she’s a hockey player for another country. Amazing what google can do for you. After finding and Instagram messaging Keely Moy in the days leading up to the USA versus Switzerland game and giving her the heads up about a possible interview, I was happy to know it actually happened. I had a few good soundbites and thanks to my colleagues back in San Diego who recorded the game, I had some video too. Just one problem … I didn’t really know anything about Keely yet because we’d only messaged back and forth on Instagram.
Thankfully, she responded to my Insta message fairly quickly and we had a great conversation over Facetime audio about her path through Junior Gulls, a club team in Anaheim, a spot on the Harvard team and thanks to her mom’s swiss roots … now a trip to the Olympics. Turns out she went to the same middle and high school as my kids too, so that’s pretty cool.
While the story pretty much wrote itself, I still had to track it with a lip microphone into my camera and then edit it together. I sent the finished story off from China to San Diego, a process which took maybe about one minute max and then gave the producer some time codes. This was the hard part, talking about it on TV during my two to three minute hit is always the easy part.
By the way if you watch the news and see me live with the “Birds Nest” in the background, this is on a platform about a half mile away from where I work in the IBC. Between walking from my desk to the bus, waiting for the bus, riding the bus, walking up the four-story platform, doing microphone checks, going live on the news, walking down the four-story platform, waiting for the bus, riding the bus and walking back to my desk … it takes about an 1 hour and 20 minutes.
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NBC 7's Steven Luke is in Beijing, China to bring us the latest updates from the 2022 Winter Olympics. Click here to follow his journey, day-by-day
