Sports Memoir

Finding My Voice

There aren’t many moments in my life when I’ve felt a sense of regret for something I had signed up for. Maybe it was just nerves, the kind you get before taking the field for a season opener, or you go out on stage in front of a big audience. It was the kind of nerves that control every fiber of your body, making you want to puke, but there was nothing you could do about it except face the very thing that was making you so nervous. Putting myself in front of a large audience was nothing new for me, as I did the morning announcements and played tennis in high school. It had been years since I had done any of that, though, and I had never done any live events. The drive to Morcom Aquatic Center was quiet. I had music on, but tuned it out as if it wasn’t even playing; all I could hear were the thoughts of self-doubt and inner turmoil circling my mind.

Once I got to the swim facility, every single negative thought in my mind was amplified by ten. “What if I mess up? Will I get fired on the first day? They’re going to laugh at me. Why did I sign up for this?” I got out of my car and walked in, not knowing where to go and having never met my boss, whom I had only exchanged a few texts and emails prior to that day. After walking around the facility clueless for a few minutes, my boss spotted me, and we chatted for a minute, getting the basic formalities out of the way. He gave me a script and told me to sit at the makeshift “press box,” which was where we would be stationed for the duration of the meet.

The setup was less than ideal; the large beach umbrellas hung low enough to the point where I hit my head as I sat down, and I could only see about half of the pool, and even though my job was only announcing lineups and in-game promotions, I wouldn’t be able to see who was winning the actual races. The makeshift station we had was made of bleachers on a two-foot-tall platform, which felt in a lot of ways unnecessary. And, of course, the microphone was at least ten years old, and the stand it was on was probably older.

The swim meet started fairly smoothly, as whatever jitters I had stirring inside me quickly went away once I got through the first few announcements. Then came the time to announce the actual names. With all due respect to the swimmers wearing the garnet and gold, these names felt like gibberish, and nobody was there to help me. It was only after a handful of the thirty events scheduled that one of the SIDs came in and wrote out a pronunciation sheet, which at the time was like giving me the answer sheet to a final exam.

Swim season went on, and although I was able to properly pronounce most of the players’ names on our team, the other teams presented a bigger challenge. I would stay up the night before going down the roster, trying my best to pronounce even more of those nearly impossible Eastern European names. There were multiple times I couldn’t help but watch as opposing teams quietly chuckled and mocked me as I butchered some poor swimmer's name while they took the starting block.

The thing was, I slowly learned to stop caring. A big part of that was because nearly everyone around me at the meets would apologize in advance for the fact that I had to go through these rosters with no help, but I also knew I could only do so much. It was less embarrassing for me to butcher a name and keep going than it was to stutter on the microphone for a few seconds, trying to slowly pronounce a name with 10 syllables, which I say from experience. 

Late into the season, I began to look forward to the meets, often getting there early, chatting with the old man who was the referee for each meet (and who often would tell me how I do a great job getting through such hard names). I would laugh in my mind about how awful the setup was for the public address announcer of a D1 program, thinking ahead of the season, I would be in a booth overlooking the pool, instead of being in a glorified tent with an obstructed view and a microphone that had to be older than me.

The nerves never went away, but instead of letting them control me, I adapted and learned that no matter how hard I try, I’m never going to do a perfect job, and that is okay. When I was asked back after working the full swim and dive season and tennis season in the following Spring, I was estatic. It took me a while to realize that perfection isn’t something that people expect, but a clear sense of effort and work ethic, which is something that people will notice and even respect.

Looking back on that first season, I can only laugh, as being able to call myself “The Voice of the Seminoles” (even if that’s only half true) is something I am incredibly proud of, and even if it’s only a job I have a handful of days out of the year, it’s a job I am incredibly honored to have.