writing

INTERLUDE: Advice for New College Graduates (From a Degenerate Horseplayer)

Posted on by Andrew Champagne

Most times, when I post here, it’ll be about analyzing a horse race, or a card of races, or a Pick Four sequence. However, there are times where I feel the need to expound on more important things. Don’t worry; I’m NOT going to talk about politics! Done breathing sighs of relief? Good.

Anyway, an old professor of mine posted to Facebook Monday, saying that graduating seniors at Ithaca College were starting to come up to him and panic about entering the real world. He urged former students to post their career paths, and it turned into a gathering of young professionals giving advice on how to handle what happens when what you wind up doing isn’t what you were intending to do at an earlier point in your life.

Make no mistake, I love the work that I do. I help coordinate the Daily Racing Form’s social media efforts, which is a dream job for a lifelong horse racing fan who also has a passion for the written word and other forms of media production. The path I took to get there, though, more closely resembles a map from “Rocky and Bullwinkle” (where the heroes circled around for a long time before getting to their destination) than anything else.

I’m a little young to do a “letter to my younger self” kind of piece, but I’d like to think I’ve had enough life experience to give soon-to-be graduates (and anyone else in this position) some advice on how to deal with the curveballs they’ll be thrown going forward. My advice isn’t anything revolutionary, but it’s stuff learned from dealing with things that have happened to me, and hopefully, it helps someone out there.

1) Never close any doors.

When I was in college, I did pretty much every sports media-related thing one could do. I PA-announced home sporting events. I participated in the radio and TV stations. I wrote. I tweeted. I networked. I ate lots of free press box food, some MUCH better than others (with some press boxes eschewing feeding the working press altogether; looking at you, Frostburg State!!!).

About the only two things I didn’t do much of were sports information and newspaper writing. The sports information director at Ithaca College and I were not fans of one another, to put things very mildly. In fact, he’s one of two former work associates with a special section of his very own in my memoirs, which will be released in about 30 years when I need money to play Pick Four tickets. Meanwhile, I never did much writing for Ithaca’s award-winning student newspaper simply because I was neck-deep in other stuff (plus studies towards a major and two minors) and didn’t have time for it.

You can probably guess where this is going. My first job out of college was working in the sports information office at Siena College (thankfully for people with infinitely more class than the person I could’ve worked for at Ithaca!). After two years there, I moved on to my second job, which came at, yep, a newspaper. Granted, much of my duties revolved around stuff I’d already done (video production, website work, etc.), but the fact remains that I did things I never thought I was going to do, and I’m proud of what I did while at those stops. In the nascent stages of Twitter, I helped triple the follower count of the main Siena account, and while at The Saratogian, we won three different statewide awards for our digital media coverage of racing at Saratoga Race Course.

Don’t shy away from something different. Use what you know, learn what you don’t, and run with the ball when it’s given to you.

2) Get a work/life balance, and keep it.

Your first job is going to be a head-spinning experience. As the new person, you may get all the work nobody else wants to do, and it may seem daunting at times. Word to the wise: Work to live. Do NOT live to work.

What you’re doing likely isn’t rocket science (unless you’re actually an aspiring rocket scientist, in which case, this paragraph probably isn’t for you). I can count on one hand the number of busy-work assignments I remember from my first job that had to get done, for whatever reason. There were a ton, but I don’t remember them.

I remember things like how I skipped off to an OTB in Bridgeport, Connecticut, to get out of driving my bosses around during the 2011 MAAC basketball tournament (I played races from Delta Downs with six older Korean gentlemen who did not speak English). I remember heading to a casino in West Palm Beach between rounds of a golf tournament Siena “hosted” in Florida. I remember walking around in Inner Harbor on a trip to Maryland, looking at the plates on the ground outside Camden Yards where long home runs returned to the surface.

My point: Don’t forget about the big picture. Work hard, but don’t forget to do stuff that makes you happy. There are times where that’s easier said than done. One year at Siena, I didn’t have a single day off for a six-week stretch from New Year’s Day to Super Bowl Sunday. Don’t let office life beat you down.

3) When things get tough, breathe.

You’re going to mess up at some point. Everyone does; some people just know how to deal with it better. When it happens (not if, but when), don’t take it personally. Roll with the punches, do your job to the best of your ability, and get past it.

My story: In the summer of 2012, we had almost an entirely-new sports staff at The Saratogian. A clerk, who was not a devout racing fan, published a story online that had a headline calling the Haskell at Monmouth Park the Eddie Haskell Invitational. I didn’t author the story, and in fact had nothing to do with it, but as the main on-track reporter for the publication, I was the face of the paper.

Needless to say, our editor (Kevin Moran, who’s one of the best bosses I’ve ever had) reamed us out, as he should have. A complete reassignment of the staff was discussed by senior management (above Kevin’s head), wherein I would be taken off the track so as to proofread everything before it went to press and people who weren’t necessarily racing fans would be on-track, producing racing-related content in one of the country’s few remaining horse racing hotbeds.

It was a disastrous idea, and we all knew it. We went to Kevin and fought for what we believed in, and to his everlasting credit (and probably the horror of upper management), he gave us the go-ahead to continue as we were. The next day at the track, the story was posted in the Saratoga press box, complete with the embarrassing headline. I gave it a day up there so people could get their laughs in, but the following morning, I made a show of tearing it off the wall, crumpling it up, and throwing it into the garbage can. It was a sign that it was time to move on, and move on we did, winning a pair of awards for our on-site coverage of Travers Day.

4) Be prepared for change, and don’t be afraid of it.

Things happen in life that knock the journey you think you’re on off-course. Sometimes, they’re work-related. Other times, these things have to do with personal lives. At any rate, you’ll be tested, and some of these tests won’t be fun ones.

My field (digital media) seems to change every five seconds. If I commandeered a time machine, went back to 2007, and told everyone that a form of online communication where posts are limited to 140 characters or less is one of the most valuable methods of reaching people around the world, I’d be outright laughed at. In 20 years, we’ve gone from VCR’s and tape-traders sending bulky tapes around the world to uploading clips onto YouTube, where a seemingly-infinite library of videos exist on any subject one can think of.

For that reason, the job you think you want now may not exist as-is in five to 10 years, or it may exist in a modified form. Don’t be afraid to learn new things. Be prepared for things to happen that aren’t in your plan, and meet challenges head-on. If you fall, fall forward, get something out of it, and don’t be afraid to ask for help from those who care about you or those you respect.

I was helped by a lot of people to get where I am today, and paying it forward is one of the best things anyone can do. If you’re a soon-to-be graduate, and you think you’re in for a world of hurt in the real world, I can assure you that you’re not. You’re in the same position everyone else has been in at one time or another, and everything is going to be okay.

Need to vent? Need advice? Think I’m a self-important blowhard who shouldn’t be writing stuff like this (NOTE: if so, please reconsider coming to my website)? Click here to reach out directly. I read everything that comes in.

Storytelling, WrestleMania, and Me

Posted on by Andrew Champagne

Above all other professional endeavors, I’m a storyteller. As a writer and a social media head, my day-to-day life consists of trying to hook an audience from the first word to the last, in an attempt to get said audience to think, act, or feel a certain way.

Some stories are longer than others, but whether it’s a 140-character tweet or a 1,000-word post on this site, that above philosophy is generally the rule. Whether you realize it or not, 90% of the people that work in my field (not just horse racing communications, but communications as a whole) are, at their cores, telling stories designed to inform or inspire an audience.

Recently, the 33rd installment of WrestleMania coming and going made me think. As I drove home from the viewing party I went to, I realized that an alarming number of people I’ve associated myself with over the years are wrestling fans. This wasn’t a conscious decision on my part, but rather, part of something bigger. I hope the people mentioned below don’t mind me expounding on it. If they mind…well, tough, it’s my site.

I went to college with Mick Rouse, and if his job isn’t the coolest one in the world, it’s at least in the discussion. He’s the wrestling writer for GQ, and his assignments have included working out with the Bella Twins (paging John Cena: Mick fended off your girl with a whip and a chair!) and interviewing WrestleMania hosts The New Day. Peter Fornatale, the main tournament writer for the Daily Racing Form, doubles as the co-writer of several autobiographical books penned by wrestler extraordinaire Chris Jericho. Gulfstream Park track announcer Pete Aiello spent part of WrestleMania watching it next to former WWE wrestler Gangrel at a south Florida restaurant. TVG’s Nick Hines routinely cut wrestling promos on his way to the winner’s circle during his training days…and if you didn’t think I was going to present video proof of this, you’re crazy.

I could keep expounding on this list for a long time, but I think I’ve made my point. An alarming number of people who consider themselves storytellers, from professional writers to announcers to hosts, are drawn to stories told in the ring by world-class athletes working off of scripts. I don’t think this is a coincidence.

Wisdom says that as we grow up, we leave certain things in the past. Children of the 1980’s flocked to Hulk Hogan, and those who grew up in the 1990’s idolized “Stone Cold” Steve Austin and The Rock. Generally, though, the perceived thought process is that sports entertainment is something you’re supposed to enjoy for a few years, grow out of, and only come back to if you’re lucky enough to have children who discover it the same way you did.

Certainly, this thought process took a hit with the launch of the WWE Network, which is probably the gold standard for over-the-top (non-cable) video presentation. Decades of wrestling from pretty much any promotion you can imagine are available on computers and gaming devices with just a few clicks, making it as easy as ever for someone who grew up idolizing any larger-than-life figure who stepped in the squared circle to relive their childhood (at the low price of $9.99 a month, of course).

That said, that doesn’t quite explain everything. My theory is that, as storytellers, we’re attracted to outlets that do what we do. Whether you see wrestling as phony or not, the ample amount of storylines on a given show generally means that there’s something for everyone. In fact, Mick’s New Day interview I mentioned earlier hit on that very topic. You don’t have to be into EVERYTHING to be drawn in, and even if you’re watching for one character, match, or segment, chances are something else will pop up that piques your interest.

Take, for instance, the WrestleMania card. If you wanted former best friends fighting, you had Kevin Owens and Chris Jericho. If you wanted to see two powerhouses hitting each other hard, there were Goldberg and Brock Lesnar. If you wanted a romantic happy ending, you could see John Cena proposing to Nikki Bella (though whether it was a storyline proposal or a real one remains to be seen).

The most monumental moment of the show, though, came at its conclusion. The Undertaker, owner of one of wrestling’s greatest gimmicks for the better part of three decades, may have wrestled his last match. To expound on the incredible talent, longevity, and star power possessed by this man, The Undertaker has now wrestled at 25 WrestleMania events, easily a record. Heading into Sunday’s show, his record in those matches, as decided by a business relying on the biggest extravaganza of the year to deliver in spades, was 23-1.

His engagement with Roman Reigns Sunday night in Orlando was not pretty, nor was that the intention of the encounter. This was a Kung Fu movie condensed to 20 minutes, with the master having nothing left to give and going out on his back at the hands of a man the company sees as a long-term star. Reigns got the extended fireworks display as he exited victorious, but all eyes were on the fallen legend in the ring, who eventually left his trademark gloves, jacket, and black hat behind while an announced crowd of more than 75,000 fans stood and applauded in appreciation of his extensive body of work.

I can’t speak for my friends and colleagues, but moments like that are why I do not hesitate in supporting something seen by many as a childish diversion. Every time I sit down at a computer to write, whether it’s a social media post or a longer article, I search for a way to hook an audience, to give them something they can digest and enjoy. World Wrestling Entertainment does the same thing at every show. WWE doing so with its employees wrestling upwards of 200 matches per year, plus making charity and media appearances and traveling all around the world, makes this pursuit even more remarkable. By comparison, I consider myself a reasonably competent writer, with a few awards to my credit, and there are days where I can’t put a coherent sentence together to save my life. These men and women tell stories for thousands of paying customers almost every day, and the bumps they take, staged or otherwise, are a HELL of a lot more painful than writer’s block!

I’ve been lucky enough to have several moments where my life and career intersected with my wrestling fandom. As a kid, I met WWE Hall of Famer Sgt. Slaughter at a department store, and the autographed picture he gave me is still hanging up at my dad’s house. A vacation to the Jersey Shore around that time included a stop at a small arena in Wildwood, where I was choked out by the legendary King Kong Bundy before an independent show later that night. As you can see, I sold the choke better than a good 80% of the roster. I’m still waiting on my paycheck.

Bundy

Many years later, while a sportswriter at The Saratogian, I interviewed Ron “R-Truth” Killings by phone from my car following a high school lacrosse game I covered just north of New York City. This was in preparation for a house show (an untelevised event) at the Glens Falls Civic Center a few nights later, which was headlined by the same John Cena who proposed to his girlfriend Sunday night. Many people at my paper rolled their eyes at the reporter covering a pro wrestling event on company time, but none of that mattered. I got to go to a WWE show for free and write about it for an audience.

I got to tell a story. And much like many of the athletes I covered that night, that’s all I’ve ever wanted to do.