Since the fall of 2022, a dedicated team of Trinity students has operated Trinity’s state-of-the-art video board for all varsity home football, soccer, and lacrosse games.
Moderated by Chad Waggoner and Michael Garrett, the student-led digital media team has managed to improve gameday experiences for all of Rock Nation. In class, students create projects and stories covering important Trinity topics and events. During live game production, students collaborate by operating cameras, creating graphics, generating instant replays, and directing the live feed on the video board. Additionally, the digital media team partners with WDRB to stream varsity football games live from Marshall Stadium on the WDRB+ app, reaching thousands of members of Rock Nation across the world.
Following a successful first year as a work study program, Trinity created the previously-mentioned Digital Media and Communications class to complement the new program, focused on improving production. Waggoner commented on the importance of Trinity’s new semester-long digital media class, stating, “We created a class curriculum that is giving guys exposure on how to create material, not just for social media posts, because we do make social media posts for our school, but also to create digital content that will be played on our video board.”
Waggoner believes this class is beneficial for many reasons. “We have fun in the classroom. It’s a project-based class, so most of the time you get to work on your project. There is little outside of class time other than doing the live production of a game, but that itself is fun because you get to be involved with Trinity Athletics in a way that 99% of our student population would not be able to.” He also commented on the experience students receive from the program and its future career possibilities. “Arguably one of the fastest-growing careers is digital media communications for corporations. Every business needs a social media account. Sports broadcasting or any kind of broadcasting is a huge part of it as well. Guys with some basic experience can make six figures being a part of the ACC Network. We have three recent graduates on the sidelines at Auburn right now.”
Last year, the program partnered with WDRB to livestream all home varsity Shamrock football games on the WDRB+ app. This addition to the team’s gameday production has seen an overwhelming level of success, reaching tens of thousands of individuals globally. “Our program is really growing, and the fact that we’re now streaming our games on WDRB is amazing. I mean, last year we had over 90,000 individual homes that were watching games throughout the year. I would not have fathomed that two years ago,” Waggoner commented.
The Trinity Digital Media Team looks to continue successfully delivering a more enjoyable gameday experience to the Trinity community. For more information about the class or program, please contact Waggoner at [email protected], and make sure to continue to support the Shamrocks!
