This summer, two lucky Patriots received a rare opportunity in their respective career paths. Patriot graduate Armand Broady and senior Tim Laurent were given the opportunity to do play-by-play and color commentary for the Florence RedWolves, a semi-professional baseball team.Laurent and Broady both agreed that itis a huge opportunity for anyone, especially a student and recent graduate; so the question is, “How did they land such a great opportunity?”
Laurent was very grateful and ecstatic when explaining how it happened.
“All the way back in March I heard that the RedWolves were looking for someone to broadcast their games over the Internet,” Laurent said.“I immediately went to the office of their GM [general manager], Jamie Young, and inquired about the internship.I already knew Jamie because I worked for the RedWolves as a game day employee for three summers. Jamie explained the job to me and suggested that if I wanted to do it, I should find someone who could do it with me.”
Herecommended Broady,who, much like Laurent, was very grateful to have the opportunity to broadcast for the RedWolves.
“Tim told me that he figured I would be the perfect guy for the job because he knows my desire to work professionally as a play-by-play broadcaster, specifically an MLB broadcaster,” Broady said.“Tim and I did a demo and allowed Jamie to listen. He did and let us know weeks later that we had the gig.”
Laurent was very passionate when speaking about the sport of baseball, which he said made this opportunity even more wonderful for him.
“I wanted a shot at this because I love baseball,” Laurent said. “Even though I don’t play anymore, I still love the game and never want to get away from it. As a mass communication major, this position gave me a great opportunity to get hands on experience in my field of study. I also wanted to do it to see if it was something I’d want to do even more of in the future.”
Broady, who earned his bachelor’s degree in mass communication in May, never played the sport but was just as passionate as Laurent when speaking about his experience and also shared his thoughts on learning from Laurent.
“Tim played baseball for years, so he’s much more of an expert than I am,” Broady said.“He even taught me how to fill out a score sheet. So I do play-by-play with Tim, and he does color commentary. I also play music and commercials through our system. It’s been great fun because we have freedom to really develop camaraderie, which is key to a broadcast.”
When asked about their actual live on-air experiences, both Broady and Laurent were completely joyous. Broadysaid he feels as though he and Laurent make a great team.
“Tim and I have little banters with each other, which makes us entertaining,” Broady said.“We also interact with our audience by doing Twitter questions during broadcasts to get listeners involved. It’s basically a radio broadcast, so I have to be more descriptive in my calls, really painting the picture for the audience. We’ve grown a whole lot together.”
Laurent agreed. Not only did he feel as though they learned a lot together while enhancing their broadcasting skills, he also felt as though they had a lot of fun while doing it and can benefit from it in the future.
“Spending the summer broadcasting was great,” Laurent said.“It was a lot of fun to go the ballpark each game and work alongside Armand as we did our best to make every person listening feel like they were at the game with us. We’d get there three hours beforehand to prepare; we wanted our broadcast to be the best it could possibly be. We both gained some invaluable experience.It’s good to know now that I’ve got a jumpstart on something that could provide me with many opportunities in the future. ”