Who We Are

Jake Lyman

December 19, 2019

Most children want to be athletes, singers or movie stars, but at Virginia Tech, there are many students who aspire to be sports journalists.

“I knew that I wanted to be a sports broadcaster right around the age of 13,” said Evan Hughes, Sports Director for 3304 Sports. “I did public address announcing at the rec level and knew that I loved sports and talking.”

Just a few years ago, there were not many opportunities for aspiring sports broadcasters at Virginia Tech. Slowly, more opportunities have come about for students to cover Hokies sports, but there were no breakthroughs until recently.

In the spring of 2019, a new opportunity for these prospective sports journalists came about. 3304 Sports was created and immediately, students had the chance to broadcast Virginia Tech Olympic sports on YouTube.

Through the Department of Communication, 3304 Sports gives students experience in the sports broadcasting field. For each game, two students are assigned to broadcast the game. The broadcast team uses equipment that is provided by the communication department in order to record and export its work.

For each game, the two broadcasters record a pre-game and post-game “stand-up” that is posted to the 3304 Sports Twitter account. In these videos, the team talks about the major storylines that will be focused on throughout the game.

For these videos, Hughes believes that the broadcasters should look the part too. Broadcasters have to wear a suit and tie for every broadcast they are assigned to. This is in order to add to the professionalism of the group. Hughes says that some students didn’t like the policy at first, but it was necessary in order to create credibility among these student journalists.

Before the game, the broadcast team also records a pre-game show for the broadcast, going over storylines and key players for the game. At halftime, the crew looks around the rest of the games going on around the sport and recaps the first-half action. Finally, the students wrap up the game with a post-game show and look forward to the next broadcast on 3304 Sports.

Obviously, this work isn’t all that the students do for these games. In order to be prepared, the team spends a lot of time leading up to the game gaining knowledge about the teams and players.

“Some people think that we just come here and show up and call the game, but it’s usually three or four days in advance that you’re researching hometowns, heights, weights and stories,” said Kevin DiDomenico, Broadcast Director with 3304 Sports. “It’s a lot of work, you can’t just show up and think you’ll call the game well.”

However, there were restrictions from the Virginia Tech Athletic Department in order for students to have these chances. First, the games can’t be called live. Therefore, the broadcasters have to record the game and then post the tape to YouTube after the fact. These limitations were put in place to protect the exclusivity of broadcasts for the newly formed ACC Network.

In fact, the reason that the group is called 3304 Sports is because of these restrictions. The group had to be an affiliate of a class in order to broadcast these games, so it is now an extension of JMC 3304, the play-by-play class on campus.

“I honestly wasn’t a huge fan of [the restrictions] to begin with,” Hughes said. “But, understanding how much money they put into the ACC Network and I kind of understood it.”

The group received its first opportunity to broadcast during a women’s basketball game in early February. Virginia Tech took on the No. 2 Louisville Cardinals and eight different student broadcasters participated in the inaugural presentation of 3304 Sports on February 10, 2019.

“It was awesome, we had a lot of excitement around it,” Hughes said. “I think that same excitement is still around the program now, it was just really cool how eager everyone was to get involved.”

Throughout the spring, the group continued to broadcast Virginia Tech sports, including softball, baseball and even wrestling. 3304 Sports called dozens of games in its first semester, but it still had room to grow.

As the Fall 2019 semester began in Blacksburg, Hughes had high hopes for where the group could go in the future. The group had organized broadcasts for the entire spring semester, but that was the extent of 3304 Sports. However, Hughes believed that the organization could do more. This included expanding the reach of the group immediately and adding new projects outside of the traditional broadcasts.

The first addition that the group made was the 3304 Sports Podcast. Every week, two students are chosen to host the podcast and are given free rein to talk about anything they want relating to sports. Topics that have been chosen already include the NFL, college football, the NBA, college basketball and the Nationals’ World Series run.

3304 Sports also has plans to expand from broadcasting into sports writing. Members of the group who are more inclined to write about sports rather than talk about them will be able to write news stories and features on the group’s own website.

“The website that we’re working on is really exciting,” Hughes said. “We’re giving the opportunity for future journalists to get real experience writing.”

A similar organization to 3304 Sports is WAER Sports at Syracuse University. This storied program has produced some of the most accomplished sports broadcasters in the field. These include Mike Tirico of NBC, Sean McDonough of ESPN and Ian Eagle of CBS. However, at WAER, students have to wait until they are juniors or seniors in order to get on-air experience. That is not the case with 3304 Sports.

“We give reps right away as a freshman, regardless of experience level,” Hughes said. “We get to call a Power-5 conference competition and I think we just have a unique opportunity that not many schools around the country have.”

Along with experience, the group has gained access to sporting events very quickly and in a variety of ways. Not only are students broadcasting the game, but Liam Sment, the Graphics Director for 3304 Sports, has been able to take pictures on the sidelines of not only Olympic sports contests, but even Hokies football.

“Virginia Tech is one of the few schools in the nation that gives students a lot of access to coaches, players and on-field experiences,” Sment said. “3304 Sports has given students chances to get in contact with Virginia Tech sports and do these things that you couldn’t do anywhere else.”

Sment has turned these pictures into graphics that are used for 3304 Sports’ social media pages. These graphics show a picture taken by Sment from the game and the final score of the contest. The group adds them to the 3304 Sports Twitter account and used as the still image that is shown on YouTube when the team posts the full broadcast online.

“You realize when working these games how much goes into this and how much you have to roll up your sleeves and just go to work,” Sment said. “There’s a lot of work that goes into it, it’s a lot of work and skill that go into making this happen.”

According to the Sports Management Degree Guide, the profession of sports broadcaster is one of the more competitive industries in journalism and the field is not growing all that much. However, these students in 3304 Sports have dedicated their time and passion to pursue this as a career.

“I’ve seen this group grow so much just since I joined it this year,” DiDomenico said. “These guys are talented, and we have a great, tight-knit group that is a lot better than I could have expected.”

3304 Sports was created less than one year ago and has already broadcasted dozens of games. The group looks to continue to grow in the future, not only in size but in opportunities.

“I think getting more and more students in here is going to push everyone to get better,” Hughes said. “I’m really excited about what’s on the horizon for this group.”