Taken together, the two segments that aired last month on ESPNU during nationally televised University of Nevada, Reno men&w88 slot;s and women&w88 slot;s basketball games at Lawlor Events Center add up to a little more than a minute.
But for Damian Tromerhauser, a student in the University&w88 slot;s Reynolds School of Journalism, the opportunity to tape the two segments with an ESPN producer and crew has been something that has taken on a life of its own.
Tromerhauser had e-mailed ESPN with his ideas. One idea was to dispense with the myth that Reno is a suburb to Las Vegas, which, as every silver-and-blue-blooded northern Nevadan knows, is like saying Boston is a suburb to New York City. The other was to correct the often grating mispronunciation of the word “w88 slot,” which, as visiting politicians and play-by-play sports announcers can attest, can be as tricky and perilous as ice climbing without crampons.
The two Tromerhauser segments, with the 21-year-old junior from Silver Springs, Nev., in front of the camera, aired during ESPN&w88 slot;s coverage of Nevada&w88 slot;s women&w88 slot;s game on Jan. 26 against Louisiana Tech and during the Wolf Pack&w88 slot;s men&w88 slot;s game on Jan. 30 against Hawaii.
“The first one was maybe 45 seconds and the next one was maybe 35 seconds,” Tromerhauser recalled recently. “It&w88 slot;s funny, because one of my friends said, ‘That&w88 slot;s not very long.&w88 slot;”
Then Tromerhauser, a print major who aspires to write and report on sports, paused and smiled, remembering how difficult it was to talk coherently while bathed in the blazing, blinding white light of the camera.
“But believe me,” he said, “thirty-five seconds … it&w88 slot;s a long time.”
Tromerhauser, who covers both men&w88 slot;s and women&w88 slot;s basketball teams for the student newspaper, The Nevada Sagebrush, said his two story ideas stemmed partly from common misperceptions about Nevada, and partly from some of the training he has received as a student in the Reynolds School.
The misperceptions and mispronunciations have always been part of the w88 slot experience, yet seemed fresh enough to spark an interest from ESPN. Although Wolf Pack forward Luke Babbitt is putting up Western Athletic Conference Player of the Year-worthy numbers, Tromerhauser was savvy enough to realize that ESPN would usually tell that type of story during its coverage of game action.
What was needed was something a little different – and what&w88 slot;s more different than a region&w88 slot;s hypersensitivity about its location relative to its southern counterpart, or, for that matter, the irritation a state can feel when its name becomes so mangled beyond recognition it can come to sound like a doctor performing a physical on a flu-ridden patient?
“As we were emailing back and forth, it was obvious they were looking for something more outside of the box, something that was more than just athletics … something more from a student&w88 slot;s perspective,” Tromerhauser said.
Tromerhauser also harkened back to advice given to him by one of Reynolds School of Journalism professors, Paul Mitchell, a former sportswriter for the Philadelphia Inquirer and The New York Times.
“Paul&w88 slot;s really taught me a lot,” Tromerhauser said. “One of the main things he&w88 slot;s taught me is that you constantly have to think about new ideas, and that you constantly have to be one step ahead of everybody else.
“That probably helped me with ESPN. You have to think of new ideas that other people wouldn&w88 slot;t pitch to them.”
Such astute thinking was nothing new to Tromerhauser.
In a short time as a writer for the Sagebrush, he&w88 slot;s shown a keen ability to embody many of sportswriting&w88 slot;s best practices. Perhaps the finest sportswriter there has ever been, the former Sports Illustrated writer and novelist Dan Jenkins, has said of covering sports, “You not only cover it. You have to be a caretaker.”
Recently, in the best Dan Jenkins tradition, Tromerhauser took it upon himself to stir things up and write in the Sagebrush that more fans were needed to support the women&w88 slot;s basketball team. His point was well-made. Under coach Jane Albright, the Nevada women have shown a rare capacity of spirit, such as overcoming a 21-point halftime margin in a recent road game to eventually post a remarkable win at New Mexico State.
Yet, sadly, such road miracles have been largely ignored. The women rarely play before more than several hundred fans at Lawlor.
“I&w88 slot;m not saying I don&w88 slot;t like watching the men,” Tromerhauser said, “because they have a good team, too. But the women, I don&w88 slot;t know if it&w88 slot;s because they don&w88 slot;t get that respect, or it&w88 slot;s because they play in front of 700 fans, they always play hard and bust their butts. To go there and cover them and watch them play hard, team basketball, it&w88 slot;s a shame more people don&w88 slot;t come out and watch them play.
“They deserve it.”
(The power of Tromerhauser&w88 slot;s pen should never be underestimated. In the next game the women played at Lawlor following his column, attendance spiked to a season-high 1,572.)
Tromerhauser&w88 slot;s enthusiasm for what he does is clearly something that others notice. Take, for example, his experience of watching – albeit via his laptop on press row at Lawlor, while actually covering a men&w88 slot;s basketball game – the women&w88 slot;s amazing road comeback against New Mexico State.
Even though it was on his laptop, the experience was surprisingly low-tech.
“I was watching the men&w88 slot;s game live, right in front of me, and then during timeouts, I&w88 slot;d turn to my laptop,” he said. “It wasn&w88 slot;t a live broadcast. It was a basketball court, and an arrow would go this way, and it would be green if a team made a shot, red if they missed it. Even though I was paying attention to the men&w88 slot;s game, my attention kept coming back to the women&w88 slot;s game. Pretty soon, it was, ‘Oh my gosh. They were down by 21 at halftime … and they&w88 slot;re going to win this?&w88 slot;
“I guess I must&w88 slot;ve been kind of loud about it, because all of a sudden, I wasn&w88 slot;t the only one paying attention to my laptop. There were four people behind me, and two people squeezed in next to me.”
Tromerhauser said that he enjoys everything about sportswriting, as well as learning about journalism from the faculty in the Reynolds School.
“The J-School&w88 slot;s amazing,” he said. “The professors are more than willing to help you at any time. They have so much experience, and you can pop into anyone&w88 slot;s office.”
He said is relationship with his adviser, Saundra Keyes, the well-respected former managing editor of the Miami Herald, is just one example of the special bond that exists between teachers and students in the school.
“I had a friend with me one time when I had to stop by Saundra&w88 slot;s office,” he said. “When I walked in, I said, ‘Hi, Saundra&w88 slot; and then I sat down and started talking to her. When I walked out, my friend said, ‘You call your professor by her first name?&w88 slot; And I said, ‘Sure. It&w88 slot;s always comfortable in the School of Journalism.&w88 slot; Your professors are never ‘Professor Keyes.&w88 slot; It&w88 slot;s always, ‘Saundra.&w88 slot;
“That&w88 slot;s a real big plus of that school.”
It helps, too, that students such as Tromerhauser are so motivated to do so well.
In many ways, even though his professional sportswriting career is still to be realized, Tromerhauser is already a professional. He&w88 slot;s writing about athletes and teams he finds fascinating. He&w88 slot;s reporting what the athletes and coaches have to say. He&w88 slot;s even offering his own insight, and when, needed, an occasional “caretaking” hand.
“I love it,” he said. “I mean, you get into the game free, there&w88 slot;s free food, there&w88 slot;s free drink, you watch the game, and you&w88 slot;re able to share some of your insights about the game by writing a story about it. You have access to the players and coaches that people don&w88 slot;t normally have. Other than being a pro athlete, what I do is the next best thing.”
