You Can Change The Game

There aren't a lot of opportunities to change amateur sports unless you find yourself on a Board of Directors for a league or have worked within a sport or league for decades. It's often beneficial to get new blood into these organizations when it comes to new ideas and new approaches to problems, but that would mean that an opening would have to be created for that new blood to seek that opportunity. Today, it seems that one major organization has an opening where someone can make a serious impact if one desires.

According to their website, Canada West, the overseeing group that looks after all sports for Canadian U SPORTS universities from Manitoba to British Columbia, posted a job opening on their website for an Associate Director of Communications and Marketing! If you wanted to make an impact, this might be the position as you'll be working directly with universities in this role as well as key stakeholders in the university sports community!

I normally don't job opening here, but I feel this one needed to be brought to the attention of my readers because it could affect this blog. While I don't dance to U SPORTS' or Canada West's drum in any way on this blog, there are some key responsibilities that could make the overall Canada West product better for all sports as well as making The Rundown into a more complete synopsis of Canada West women's hockey every week.

One of the responsibilities reads, "Develop strategies to promote and grow social media presence", and I cannot state how important this is for any sort of amateur sports presence. If you want to attract attention to your conference, league, teams, schools, and athletes, Canada West's presence on social media should be, colloquially, in everyone's face. Canada West's social media presence does the bare minimum in promoting athletes and schools as it is, and this needs to change quickly when it comes to all the great stories that are found throughout western Canada.

Granted, Canada West's timeline on Twitter, for example, has been filled with championship stories about the games played in soccer, football, rugby, and field hockey lately, there is definitely a lack of a human component on their timeline that would make me interested in who these athletes are that are featured as "players of the week".

As an example, Courtney Kollman of the Mount Royal Cougars was featured on November 2 as the Canada West women's hockey Player of the Week after taking the goal-scoring lead in the conference at that time. There were no highlights of Courtney's goals on the write-up, and there was no mention of her being a bronze medallist with Canada's U18 team in 2018, the fact that she was coached by Dinos head coach Carla MacLeod at the Edge School, or what she's studying at Mount Royal University where she's earning her Bachelor of Science degree. This quick addition of the human element to Courtney's background now has me interested in Courtney as a person, and I might be more apt to go watch her play if I was on the fence about going to watch Mount Royal hockey.

Context matters when it comes to catching attention on Canada West, and this human element while linking to all sorts of other schools and accounts on social media would create all sorts of traction regarding retweets and people seeing these interactions.

The other responsibility that jumps out at me is the one that reads, "Ensure conformity of brand and streaming regulations". There aren't a lot of streaming regulations that are forced upon us as broadcasters, but there is one that we're reminded about constantly when it comes to the broadcasts: don't be homers.

Far too often, I hear from people from schools across western Canada about how specific broadcasts are very home team-centric when it comes to the calling of the games. Yes, there will always be a slight lean towards the team that is at home simply because that broadcasting team knows more about the team represented on the home side of the scoreboard, but this is where the Canada West liaison - aka this position - needs to step in and ensure that the broadcasters from those schools are lending a voice to equal representation to both schools.

I'm not saying Bisons Sports is perfect in any way when it comes to this, but I am rather proud that Bisons Sports allows us the opportunity to research other stories at schools and present them as features on the first intermission as well as talking about news and human interest stories in the pregame show. We often speak about the athletes from opposing teams with some background, and both Kyleigh and I celebrate great goals scored at either end of the ice regardless of what colour uniform scored them.

Haing watched broadcasts with the Bisons on the road, I can honestly say that there are a couple of schools who endorse their athletes wholeheartedly while forgetting there is a second team on the ice. This Canada West position would have that ability to remind those schools to feature both schools equally in their broadcasts, and we'd get a much better standard of broadcasting across western Canada.

Beyond that, the ability to elevate the broadcasts would also be something that this Canada West liaison would be able to do. Featuring a "Game of the Week" much in the way that a Hockey Night in Canada does in their promotions would incorporate that social media outreach once more, and it may sell a few more Canada West TV packages. And, if we're being honest, this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to graphic packages used on the broadcasts, new innovations for broacasts, and more. This position could really make a huge impact on how university sports is seen, referred to, and talked about across Canada.

The too long-didn't read part of this article is that if a motivated person applied for this job, successfully navigated the application process, and was hired by Canada West, this person could make a significant impact on Canada West for all sports. I just based this article on what we see in women's hockey, but imagine getting the same promotion for athletes in volleyball, swimming, track-and-field, and golf. These are the athletes in lower-profile sports that seemingly get forgotten about until they land on an Olympic team or win a PGA event or one of the big US marathons. Only then do we hear a passing note about "went to school at the University of", and that's the last time someone mentions it until these athletes surface once again.

I gave this opportunity a lot of thought today in terms of what I'd want to see change simply because I know things can be better. I don't have a marketing degree, though, so I'm already out of the running when it comes to this position, but I know there are smart people out there who have marketing degrees that could legitimately work with Canada West and elevate the athletics at Canada's western universities in a big way.

Maybe that person is you. Maybe you know someone who would qualify for this position who is thinking about a new challenge. Maybe you agree with what I wrote above in terms of making things better for amateur athletes and sports in Canada. If any or all of these reasons hit home for you, circulate this opportunity to anyone who you think would be interested.

I won't lie in that there will likely be a lot of late nights and thankless days while improving things. And while the position will require a lot of work in making things better, there's a huge opportunity to take amateur sports at the university level to a level never seen in Canada. If that opportunity excites you, let's get someone in this position who isn't afraid to put the work in to make things better.

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!