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This story is part of our December 2021 CoSIDA 360 package, to view more stories, click here.

This year’s ESPN SportsCenter Veterans Day coverage featured the Coast Guard Academy in its’ one-hour tribute show to the military, America’s Heroes? SportsCenter Special: Salute to Service from the U.S. Coast Guard Academy and Coast Guard Station New York. The special included footage from the Academy classrooms and athletic fields at the NCAA Division III institution, as well as interviews with cadets, coaches, and the Academy Superintendent.

Hosted by SportsCenter anchor Michael Eaves, the special included other ESPN national on-air personalities doing on-campus interviews, as well as an on-campus interview and message from the President of ESPN, Jim Pitaro, a Navy veteran.

ESPN shot in New London, Connecticut, and Coast Guard Station New York, from USCG learning facilities, ships, helicopters, and more. It was an enormous project, with almost five terabytes of content captured on seven different types of cameras over six days of shooting.

Here’s the perspective of Coast Guard’s two athletic communications staffers who were deeply involved in the project at the D3 institution - Assistant AD for Media Relations Jason Southard and Bridget Delaney, Assistant Sports Information Director/Director of Digital Media.


The Small College Experience: Filming ESPN's "America's Heroes" Veteran's Day Tribute

by Jason Southard – Coast Guard Academy, Assistant AD for Media Relations

Each year, ESPN dedicates a week of multiplatform content in November as part of its annual America's Heroes: A Salute to Our Veterans initiative to salute veterans and active members of the United States Armed Forces.

This year the special was shot at the Coast Guard Academy in New London, Conn., and Coast Guard station New York for the hour long feature which aired on ESPN on Veteran’s Day and ABC on the Sunday after the holiday.

We are just a two-person office and it was a tremendous opportunity for both Bridget Delaney and myself to showcase the outstanding coaches and young men and women that we get to work with on a daily basis. The ESPN crew was excited because it was the first time doing one of these specials that the military base selected had sports teams. Coast Guard has 23 intercollegiate sports and competes at the Division III level. Nearly 70 percent of all cadets play either a varsity or club sport.

 

We worked with the academy public affairs staff to come up with things that we wanted to touch on from the athletics side. One segment of the show about our football team honoring the Pea Island Life Saving Station (wearing Pea Island jerseys this year) became even more interesting when we learned from an Instagram comment that one or our freshmen football players — Solomon Ashby III — was the great, great grandson of one of the keepers of Pea Island. Pea Island Station, located on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, was the first station to be manned entirely by a Black keeper and crew.

Ashby was featured along with our head football coach, C.C. Grant, the first African American head football coach at a service academy and our former academy baseball coach. Again, the new storyline developed due to a social media post. ESPN’s Booger McFarland came on campus to interview Coach Grant.

 

There was also a “women in the Coast Guard” roundtable with two student-athletes and two coaches, hosted by ESPN’s Kelsey Riggs. One interesting stat that many do not know is that 40 percent of the Coast Guard cadets are female, the highest percentage of the service academies.

We found out that we would be featured early in September and filming took parts of seven weeks, on and off with so many moving parts. For example: the women’s round table had a change of host, location and date at least four times in a span of three days, but as athletic communicators it was nothing we couldn’t handle. The ever-changing situations helped us build an even stronger relationship with the CGA public affairs staff.

We worked with ESPN personalities McFarland, Riggs, Sal Paolantonio and Michael Eaves at the academy while Marty Smith and Jeff Saturday visited station New York. Legendary William C. Rhoden of the Undefeated narrated the piece on Pea Island.

 

Coach Grant’s interview was early on a Sunday morning following a tough loss the day before. The crew had come back at least four times alone to get footage of Coach Grant. ESPN was at practice, at his personal defense class and at a game to grab B-roll footage and mic up the coach.

This is not a normal occurrence at the Division III level, but the cooperation from Coach Grant and all involved made it go smoothly. They also shot practice and went to class with our two cadet-athletes featured in the women’s roundtable.

There were challenging times as we tackled the dreaded crossover season in athletics along with putting the finishing touches on the ESPN piece. The one big challenge we had being a small Division III school was that we had no historical video to share with them. For instance, we had no video of Coach Grant coaching baseball, so we had to use action photos instead while shooting posed action of Coach.

A tremendous amount of work and collaboration went into the special for sure and obviously ESPN did a fantastic job with the piece. The feedback from everyone who saw it makes every second spent working behind the scenes worth it, as it gave the national audience a wonderful glimpse at the Coast Guard and its academy.

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SIDEBAR: The ESPN Project Experience

by Bridget Delaney – Coast Guard Academy, Assistant Sports Information Director/Directeor of Digital Media

The opportunity to work with Jason (Southard), our public affairs staff, coaches and cadets, and the whole ESPN crew involved in this project - was amazing. It was such a great learning experience for a younger professional like myself, as I had never been a part of a big-scale project like this. I was constantly asking Jason questions and just wanted to be involved in as much as possible, which was sometimes a challenge. There were days that I was covering games or events we had going on, while Jason was working with the ESPN crew — and vice versa.

 

The most important takeaway for me was the importance of teamwork. This project would not have been possible without the teamwork and cooperation from everyone involved. Plans were ever-changing; we were constantly updating schedules and making sure our coaches and student-athletes could accommodate the filming schedules and ideas which which being updated and changed. Being versatile, adaptable, patient and flexible were important skills throughout the project. This was a great learning experience.

Being able to see the process, from the setup and shooting stages to the final product on ESPN was such a sense of accomplishment. Our coaches and cadets did such a great job at showcasing how special the academy is. We were so happy with the special and it was such an honor to work on a project like this.

 

   

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