My experience covering an international basketball tournament

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to travel to Seoul, South Korea with our Men's Basketball team for the Asia Pacific University Basketball Challenge. I had never been to Asia before so I was excited about the new travel opportunity but also was excited to be traveling for an athletic event again.

Before I even left for Seoul, I immediately noticed differences compared to some of the past sports events I've covered in the states. There were minimal details besides when the games were happening and the countries playing in the tournament. At first I wondered if the lack of details was just in regards to the media, but the more I communicated with our team administrators, I realized there were limited details about the tournament in general, which meant having to fully embrace the "go with the flow" mentality and be prepared to adjust on the fly.

Once we got to Seoul, I received my media credential which was included in the credential package for our team's travel party. I'm sure in many cases there are team media credentials included in team credential packages, however in my experience media credentials are typically at a separate pick up at the stadium, so this was a noticeable difference.

On the second day in Seoul, our team had their first practice at the at the arena where the tournament was taking place. During this practice, I was able to get a first glance as to what gameday was going to look like for me and how I was going to be operating. The first thing to test was the wifi, and from what I could tell, it seemed like the wifi was relatively strong so I hoped I wasn't going to have any issues pushing content through during games. Next was where was I going to have my workstation set up during the game... Based on everything that was set up that day, there was a scorers table and the team benches, but no media table or signs of a media room. This ended up being the most significant thing to have to adjust to, as there has always been some media room/table at all the sporting events I've covered in the past. I hoped there was going to be a more official set up the next day, but I had minimal expectations.

At our first game the following day, the only difference in regards to the stadium floor set up was that there was a minor streaming operation set up on the opposite side of the team benches. Now that I knew that there was going to be no media table I knew I was going to have to improvise. Since I also needed to be shooting photo and video during the game, I ended up having my laptop set up on the back part of the hoop. For some of the other games, I ended up having my laptop set up right next to me on the arena floor.

While this was convenient as to not having to move at all during gameplay it was horribly awkward not having a real workstation and having to do editing on the ground. Another thing that I noticed during this first game of the tournament was that I was the only one of my position that had traveled with any of the involved team delegations. There was a select amount of local press that was located at a press table much higher up in the stadium and one nonchalant photographer, but from what I could tell there was no one running social media and producing videos. This was very different because I had complete free reign over the entire perimeter of the court and was not restricted to the typical media sections next to the hoop with games in the states. This difference was nice because it allowed me to get creative and shoot different angles than I typically would at a typical basketball game.

One thing that I hadn't prepared for was the faster pace of international basketball. I knew that the international game had slightly different rules that the American game, but one of these rule differences that I wasn't aware of was the minimal amount of timeouts and game stoppage. My content plan for the tournament was based on the American game, so having less stoppage time to work with left me with a very limited amount of time to get real-time updates out on twitter and our Instagram story for the small amount of fans that had stayed up to watch the game (which was on around 1 am California time). Since I had to adapt to this difference on the fly, I decided to focus on Twitter for providing game updates and wait on the Instagram story until after the game because this would give me the chance to actually curate the best content based on what I had captured during the game. Since our game was occurring in the middle of the night in California, I knew I had a little bit of a time window after the game to get up an Instagram story and have it appear to our followers as something that had been happening real time. Focusing on Twitter was ultimately the better call for real-time content because we actually had a few fans staying up following the twitter feed, so it was essential to provide them with updates, even if it was just a text tweet.

The postgame recap routine was the biggest adjustment of all to the regular basketball game coverage workflow. Since I was a "one-man-band" of sorts for all of the media related duties(documenting, content creation, media relations, and social media updates) during this tournament, I had to prioritize with the extreme short-term tasks like shooting postgame locker room speeches, postgame interviews, getting box score copies, etc. especially since I was on the team bus and didn't have my usual postgame work window at the stadium. The tournament representatives didn't understand my role as the media relations representative, so they worked straight through the assistant coaches.

The main assistant coach that was the primary contact point for the tournament representatives didn't mind this activity, so with the language barrier and their lack of understanding of my role, it seemed most fitting to not impose myself, and so I opted to step back and make sure I was available as a resource for the coaches as needed. The only snag I ran into in the postgame recap was a wifi issue. I had the postgame video uploaded and had sent the posts out; however, they didn't make it through. I believe what happened was that the tournament representatives unplugged the router as soon as they started cleaning up, so my score graphic video didn't have enough time to make it through. So I, unfortunately, had to wait until I got back to the hotel, which is horribly less than desirable since we had a few people that had actually stayed up and were agonizing over that the final score. The only other minor hold up was having to force content through on the spotty hotel connection.

The second game of the tournament against Japan went very similarly to the first game regarding my coverage with no significant issues holding up content. Following the second game, I had the time to sit in on the postgame press conference with the Korean Media. Witnessing the language barrier in full effect was interesting because every question and every answer had to be asked/told twice. It was also interesting to see how the Korean Media asked questions that were mostly regarding our coach's opinion on the Korean team and the other nation's represented in the tournament and not about our team or our game performance. While it's not abnormal to have media members asking pointed questions to fill in the blanks for their pre-written stories, usually these stories will be written about the team involved in the game.

The third game against the Philippines was where I ran into the most difficulties with getting content out. The wifi was almost non-existent, so it was impossible to get anything posted. Thankfully we were playing in the early time slot around 1 pm in Seoul (around 9 pm Pacific time), so my co-workers were awake and able to help contribute to getting content posted. For whatever reason, I was able to send content to them via text(which was connected to the wifi), but I couldn't get anything posted. This major snag threw me off through the early part of the first half, but I was able to settle back in. I was thrilled to have the assistance especially since our game was happening during a reasonable time on the west coast. I did have to work through some frustrations in the heat of the moment with the un-intentional communication gap in regards to my game coverage workflow for the trip compared to our regular home game workflow during the season.

All of my social media coverage went smoothly for the final two games of the tournament against Chinese Taipei and Russia. While I was waiting outside of the press conference room following the fourth game, I actually had a media member ask me if she could interview me. This request really caught me off guard as this was very unexpected. At this point, I was well aware that my position was unique to the team's involved in the tournament, but I hadn't expected the few local Korean Media to take notice of my presence.

Overall I thought it was a successful trip. The team finished second in the tournament, and it was a great playing opportunity for the young guys to get a lot of minutes and develop some strong depth heading into this year. I thought this trip was an excellent opportunity for the team and coaching staff to get familiar with my presence and to see my work in action. This trip was also a great opportunity to travel to a new country and get another work travel experience under my belt. I also felt like I was able to capture some great off the court moments which made my recap vlog(shown above) one of my best videos I've made lately.

I'm so happy I was able to make this trip and am excited for the next opportunity to hit the road.