Newscast #5 - Andrew Nogowski - Spring 2022

For Show 5, my story was how COVID cancellations affected the mental health of student athletes in

Spring of 2020. Going into this story, I knew I wanted my story to revolve around the baseball team because they were an active Spring sport that was affected in Spring 2020.  I also wanted to do this story because I was curious if student athletes suffered from the lack of connections to others like the rest of us in Spring 2020.

I was fortunate that there were a few players remaining from the 2020 team. I interviewed Vince Ippoliti, a Redshirt Senior Catcher/Outfielder and he was a great person to interview. He was really open with me on what himself and the team was going through in the Spring of 2020. Hearing him talk about how uncertain the team was when they would be on the baseball diamond again gave great insight on what many student athletes were going through during that time. For my expert, I talked to Dr. Sam Zizzi, a professor at CPASS and a certified mental performance consultant. I thought he would make a great interview because I took his sports psychology class in the Fall. He did a great job reinforcing how the uncertainties of the pandemic was one of the biggest causes for the increase in student athlete mental health concerns.

The biggest challenge I had with this story was the time commitment. I went and shot all of my b-roll at the baseball game against Marshall. The game lasted around four hours long, which is very long for a baseball game. However, because of that I was able to get all the b-roll I needed and then some. That was a very exhausting day, but well worth it in the end in my opinion.

Overall, this was a very easy package for me to put together. In editing, I really did not encounter any difficulties with what shots to use because I had so much footage to choose from. I had so much fun being able to be a part of this class and I learned so much. I’m excited that I will be coming back to WVU News next Spring as a seasoned veteran!