Sports Journalism students Chris Farrell, Shawn Pittman and Adrienne South got some great hands-on experience freelancing for the Canada Press. They combined to provide coverage of the Ontario Hockey League’s 2010 All-Star Game and Skills Contest in Kingston.
South filed a story to CP from the Skills Contest on Feb. 2 in which the OHL Western Conference All-stars beat the East 18 to 15.
In her story, South reported that Kitchener Rangers’ defenseman John Moore, a 19-year-old from Winnetka, Illinois, won the hardest shot competition clocking in at 98 miles per hour. South noted Moore wasn’t surprised by speed of his shot. It had previously been verified by a law enforcement officer.
Moore has a friend whose father is a police officer. One day, when Moore was shooting pucks, the cop got his radar gun and tagged Moore’s shot – at 98 mph.
Farrell and Pittman teamed up to provide full coverage of Wednesday night’s All-Star game for CP. The game proved to be a high-scoring affair, with the Eastern Conference beating the West 17 to 10. That smashed the OHL All-star game record of 22 goals at the 2007 contest.
CP is a national wire service which relies on a network of staff reporters and freelancers to cover sports events across Canada. CP copy is distributed to countless newspapers, radio and TV stations. When they arrived at the K-Rock Centre in Kingston, Farrell and Pittman were delighted with the accommodations. As the eyes and ears for CP, they warranted their own booth from which to cover the game.
The SPJN stringers divided up the duties, with Farrell filing the game story at the buzzer. Pittman served up the agate to the copy editors on the CP desk in Toronto by filing a list of goal scorers and penalties after each period. That was no easy task in what proved to be a very busy game.
“It was hard to watch the game because I was typing up each of the scoring plays,” said Shawn. “In a game with 27 goals, I was typing a lot.”
Farrell also filed a “writethru” story with quotes Pittman provided from the post-game interviews and Pittman also submitted a sidebar feature on the game.
“It was a great experience,” said Shawn, “I would do it again in a second.”
Meantime, in Sault Ste. Marie, Brad Coccimiglio, a 2009 graduate of the Sports Journalism program, also is freelancing for CP.
Coccimiglio is providing daily coverage of the week-long Canadian women’s curling championship, also known as the Scotties Tournament of Hearts.
