Monica Greene, a former Green Hope athlete, helps with interviews at the adidas Seahawk Invitational last year.
Last fall, NCRunners reached out to students attending college in areas where major cross country meets are held, and invited them to participate in the coverage as guest reporters. All of them were, of course, former high school runners, and many were still active in the sport at the collegiate level in various ways. The results were amazing: these volunteers had such familiarity with the sport and the meets they were covering that they were able to step in and be comfortable right away, and they produced great content ranging from photos to interviews to sideline videos. Not bad for an experiment that was conceived a few days before the Jungle Run, and thrown together each week as a side project! Of course, the program ultimately led to the hiring of two of the college reporters as staff members this fall.
Due to this success, NCRunners will continue the program this fall, and we hope to expand it into track season in the spring. I will directly seek out college reporters in certain key areas, but I would love to hear from anyone who is interested in giving it a shot as a guest reporter at a meet I cover. One important note: right now, we're not sure if it is acceptable to the NCAA for active varsity athletes to participate in this type of promotion, so you can't be on your school's team if you want to be a college reporter (though club athletes are fine, and certainly welcome). In particular, we are looking for folks in the following cities:
- Greenville
- Wilmington
- Asheville
- Greensboro
- Boone
- Winston-Salem
If you're interested in being a guest reporter this season, you can contact me by email (mine is at the bottom of every page at NCRunners) or on Facebook.