Syracuse, NY -- The state of Massachusetts boasts legendary teams such as the Red Sox, the Patriots, the Celtics, and the Bruins, just to name a few. Jackie Mundry loves them all.
Mundry was born in the neighbouring state of New Hampshire, but was raised in Massachusetts, so she is wrapped in the state's sports culture.However, the under five foot Mundry, who studies Broadcast and Digital Journalism at Syracuse University, first fell in love with the sport of figure skating.
Mundry began at the age of six and competed in numerous in state championships, qualified for the State Games of America at the age of 14 and was a member of the University of New Hampshire's club team.
Her favourite skater is Sasha Cohen, who won a silver medal during the 2006 Olympics in Turin despite falling during her final free skate.
"It’s kind of hard to recover after you fall in a competition and she just got back up and she still placed," Mundry recalls.
That same year, Mundry had her parents record the skating events on cassette tapes when she couldn't watch it live. The 2006 Olympics also served as her introduction to the legendary Bob Costas, who hosted the figure skating broadcasts.
“I felt like he [was] the utmost professional,” Mundry said. “I don’t think you can get better than Bob Costas.”
Mundry has aspirations of becoming a sports reporter once she finishes her studies at Syracuse. While the idea of interviewing Tom Brady or LeBron James as a sideline reporter is appealing, she wouldn't close the door to covering figure skating again. It seems to be where she's most comfortable.
"Being in a rink and being around figure skating," she said. "It’s home to me,"
TRANSCRIPTION OF INTERVIEW WITH JACKIE MUNDRY
LEGEND:
MCK: Julian McKenzie
MUN: Jackie Mundry
MCK: This is Julian McKenzie. I’m sitting down here with Jackie Mundry. This is for the assignment for the Sports Communications class. Jackie, thank you so much for taking the time to sit down with me and answer some questions that I have about you.
MUN: Yeah. Sounds good, I’m excited.
MCK: Yeah. I’m excited as well. First things first. You are a sports person like myself. What attracts you to sport? What do you like most about sports?
MUN: I like the camaraderie of it. I think it just brings people together in a way that other things can’t. Especially with a lot of the horrible things that are happening in the world. Not that sports fixes it but it can bring the hope to it when you recognize it at games. Being from the New England-Boston area, I went to the Bruins game after Boston Marathon bombing and they had a moment of silence on the ice and they put the Marathon ribbon on the ice and it just brought everyone together.
MCK: I’m glad that you mentioned the fact that you are from the Boston area. There’s a lot of winners around that area, the Bruins, obviously, are successful, the Celtics are successful, the Patriots are so successful. Must be great coming from an area where you’ve got all these great teams and great champions right?
MUN: Yeah, but there are also real fans. No one’s really a bandwagon. My grandfather was 86 years old when the Red Sox won their first World Series in 86 years. So that was really interesting because he was a fan, he watched every game religiously even though they were awful.
MCK: We get why you love sports. What about the appeal of sports reporting?
MUN: I like the idea of telling people things firsthand, whether it be news or sports, but I am far more passionate about sports than I am about news. I want to be standing on the sideline asking Tom Brady how it feels to win his 10th Super Bowl or another one of the greats, another successful athlete in this world. I’d love to be court side with LeBron. Not even a big LeBron fan but it’d definitely be cool.
MCK: LeBron. Tom Brady, I assume, obviously, has to be in that discussion as well. If you had an opportunity to ask Tom Brady a question what would you ask him?
MUN: I don’t know. I had a conversation about something similar related to Tom Brady with a friend of mine a few weeks ago and we were talking about how he’s the kind of guy we wouldn’t be afraid to approach. He seems really approachable and he’s down to Earth even though he’s married to the most expensive supermodel in the world. I feel like I would just ask him what it’s like to be Tom Brady because I feel like he kind of portrays himself as being a regular guy.
MCK: Ok fine. So, going back to sports reporting. Can you tell me about any experience you may have had doing interviews, internships, whether you wrote for school newspapers. Lay it out for me if you can.
MUN: I worked for the UNH Athletic Communications Department and it was called UNH Wildcat Productions and I was their little sideline reporter. Nothing live or crazy, it’s not a big D1 school or anything like that. We’re D1 AA. So I got to hang out with the soccer teams and a few of the smaller teams. I did get to do some work with the football and hockey teams which is really cool. And I would do pre and post game interviews with coaches and the players that made the big plays in the games, and then I would go do a stand-up before and after. I would put that altogether in Final Cut Pro and it would just go on YouTube so it’s not like it was live but it was a little experience in front of the camera. Then I was a sports intern at the ABC affiliate in New Hampshire as well.
MCK: What did you do as an intern for [the ABC affiliate]?
MUN: I got coffee.
MCK: Really?
MUN: Yeah.
MCK: Oh. I’m sorry.
MUN: If I’m being completely honest I definitely got coffee. I did some other things too, I got to write scripts and when they would go on the air at 11 and the Celtics were in overtime I would have to sit and watch the game and bring my boss what he had to say. So I’d have to write scripts really fast. But I did get a lot of coffee and did a lot of the not-so glamorous work.
MCK: That’s always been a nightmare as someone who’s been an intern before. I’ve only had to do that once. Fetch coffee one time. From all of the stories you may have covered, all the internships you may have done, actually we’ll stick more with the stories, what’s your most memorable sports story that you’ve either written about, done a TV package about, any type of coverage about?
MUN: The first game I logged where I ended up writing a script was Super Bowl 49. I felt like it was a high-stakes type of environment which is interesting. It was interesting to cover a team you love in a more professional atmosphere because as much as I would love to hang home in Boston and hang out with the Red Sox every day and do that kind of thing, I feel like, for me, if I’m going to be a team reporter I should probably be a team reporter elsewhere. Just because I’m really passionate about my sports. I was logging Super Bowl 49 and when Malcolm Butler intercepted Russell Wilson, I literally jumped out of my chair like a schoolgirl. I got to write the script for the game and we watched it in the newsroom with all these other New England people and I definitely think I should work elsewhere.
MCK: You know the Seahawks should’ve run the ball, right?
MUN: I still watch this. I watch this all the time. I’m always like ‘Are you sure Russell Wilson? You think this is a good idea?’ I don’t know if you saw the commencement speech he gave this year
MCK: Oh, I didn’t see it.
MUN: I didn’t see it but I saw a quote of it and he was telling people advice and eventually he was like ‘and if you’re 1st & goal and you’re in the Super Bowl against the New England Patriots, don’t throw an interception’. It was just really funny.
MCK: I’d like to go back to the fact that you say you would prefer to cover a sports team outside of your home town area. Because there are a lot of people who get to cover their hometown team and they kind of let a lot of their fandom out whenever they either write blog posts or they tweet about them when they do any type of coverage. Is that why you would want to go outside, is there another reason?
MUN: The last assignment for our Sports Communications class was to talk about reporters, what they do well and what they don’t. I chose Jenny Dell who used to sideline the Red Sox until she started dating and married Will Middlebrooks and lost her job.
MCK: Oh my God.
MUN: But she’s from New England. She’s from Connecticut, she grew up a Red Sox fan. I watched some of her clips, especially early on and she was very, she put a lot of emotion in it. She was really excited about the team a lot and she was really sad when the team lost and when they did the Jimmy Fund Cancer Benefit that the Red Sox do every year, she was so emotionally invested. She was telling the camera that she went to the hospital and as awesome as that is, the Jimmy Fund is a great cause, it’s hard to separate that as a reporter versus, as she’s been called, a recorder. She just kind of says what happens instead of reporting on it, if that makes sense. I think she’s a lot better now as an NFL sideline reporter for CBS than she was for the Red Sox because she’s covering other teams.
MCK: Ok.
MUN: Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to cover my teams, I just think it would be smarter not to.
MCK: Do you have any particular cities that interest you, out of curiosity?
MUN: Not really, I mean, I do like some other teams just because I like the players on the teams. But I’m open to living anywhere.
MCK: Ok. So why come to Syracuse to get a degree in broadcast-digital journalism?
MUN: Because it’s the best place to get it?
MCK: That’s it? It’s just the best place to get it?
MUN: I didn’t really know if I definitely wanted to go to grad school. I was really just in a slump in my job because I had a gap year between my undergrad and this year. I was in a slump, I didn’t like it. My editor was kind of rude and I wasn’t doing what I wanted, so I applied to grad school and I only applied to Syracuse and BU because Boston University, I could live at home, probably still work. I got into both and both my parents, my mom, who doesn’t want me to be away from home at all is like ‘you have to go to Syracuse, it’s the best program’. That’s why I’m here.
MCK: When you walk along Syracuse and you hear…they have this illustrious history of sports people coming through their hallways. You hear names like Bob Costas, Mike Tirico, do you have a personal affinity to any of those names or to anyone who else who may have their name on the big Sports Communications wall?
MUN: Professor Torrance actually in class, the other day, asked us what broadcasters we feel comfortable listening to and things like that. Who we feel we have a relationship with. I raised my hand and said Bob Costas, which I feel like it’s copping out of the answer but I grew up figure skating so every time the Olympics would come around my parents would tape it for me, way back when there were tapes, so I could watch it. When they were overseas they were on at 1:00 in the morning sometimes. So I would watch the figure skating events and I got more into other sports and just the way he presented himself at the Olympics I felt like he's the utmost professional. I don’t think you can get better than Bob Costas.
MCK: That’s true. He’s a legend. Coming up from Canada and I had my own Canadian broadcasters, getting to see him on Sunday Night Football and other broadcasts, those were great to see. So I too understand the legend of Bob Costas.
MUN: I started seeing him when I was six and I was watching those tapes that my parents recorded of figure skating for me. Then I got into other sports and I would watch football with my dad and I’d be like ‘that’s the same guy who does skating’. He’s a legend, he’s not just the guy who I watched do skating at the Olympics, he’s Bob Costas.
MCK: Who was your favourite figure skater?
MUN: Probably Sasha Cohen. She doesn’t compete anymore but she got the silver in the 2006 Olympics, something like that, I’m not positive. She’s great. She fell at the beginning of her long program and it’s kind of hard to recover after you fall in a competition and she just got back up and she still placed.
MCK: Would you be open to covering figure skating?
MUN: Yeah I’d love to. Being in a rink and being around figure skating, it’s home to me. The World Figure Skating Championships, it happens all over the world, this year it happened to be in my backyard, the TD Garden in Boston, so I blew way too much money and went with my mom, my best friend and her mom and it was the best experience. It was so funny because everyone I grew up skating with, it was in Boston, so why wouldn’t we all go. My coach, [we were] catching up, hadn’t seen in forever, him and his wife had a daughter, he showed me pictures and he’s like, ‘this is just a family reunion, it was so nice to see you all’. So as much as I’d love to cover skating, I think it has too much of my heart. It’s kind of like my Boston sports. I’d definitely do it, don’t get me wrong, I would take Bob Costas’s job when he wants to retire, all of his jobs, I’d do Sunday Night Football too.
MCK: I don’t think you’re alone in that, Jackie.
MUN: I don’t think so either.
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