This is my first semester in Morgantown and I was so excited to earn my master’s degree in journalism. Moving to a huge school was a huge transition but this WVU News class has helped me through it all. For my first story I decided to do a profile piece on the WVU football teams punter, Billy Kinney. Kinney’s story was very interesting to me because he grew up in Morgantown, West Virginia and his father played on the football team here as well. Some of my package focuses on the fact that Scott Kinney wore number 15 while playing at WVU and Billy walked out of the tunnel for the first time wearing number 15 just like his father.                                                                                  

The first thing I did was my background research on Kinney, I wanted to know all the information about him before I went to interview him on the football teams’ media day. I did not want to ask him any stupid question. Going into player interviews you have to be somewhat aggressive as a reporter and especially as a woman in sports reporting. That being said, I did my research and prepared my questions ahead of time and when I had the opportunity I was able to ask Kinney all the questions I needed answered.

I set up and interview time with his parents who live in Morgantown, which is why the name of the package is hometown hero. We met and talked a little about the family’s’ story before we sat down for the interview, the key is to make the subject feel comfortable. You can sometimes roll the camera before asking questions this way they don’t even know the camera is recording and they feel more relaxed. They showed me picture of Billy growing up at WVU games and photos of Scott playing at WVU wearing the same uniform.

When it came to getting b-roll of Billy playing, he’s the punter so you want him on the field so you can record him but you don’t want him on the field because that means your team is kicking the ball to the other team. When I was covering Billy’s story he was ranked 6th in the nation in yardage with an average of 47.1 yards per punt.

One thing I loved about making this package was how happy it made the Kinney family. Seeing Scott and Jayne get choked up over talking about Billy was wonderful, it’s amazing how happy my story made their family. I could not have gotten any of this done without my sports crew, our editors, and producers and technical crew, they make everything come to life. I am so grateful to have this opportunity to be a sports reporter for WVU News I am very excited to continue my journey finding new great stories on our wonderful student athletes.