SYRACUSE, N.Y.-Although he is from the small town of Wayland, Mass., Matt St. Jean has not lived a small life.
He lived in Wayland for 13-years, until it was time for him to go to college.
St. Jean also assisted driver Kurt Busch to honor a fallen soldier each race. Busch would have the name of the soldier added to his car. Then St. Jean would take the soldier's family to see the car.
“It was really a touching experience and getting to see the happiness on their faces,” he said.
After working with the non-profit, St. Jean moved back to Massachusetts. During that time, he followed his passion and applied to S.I Newhouse at Syracuse University.
St. Jean is interested in play-by-play announcing, but he is considering all aspects of sports journalism.
A transcription of my conversation with Matt is below but you can listen to the audio version here as well.
Q: Where are you from?
A: I’m from just outside of Boston, MA., a little town called Wayland.
Q: And you were there your whole life?
A: Yup, pretty much. I moved there when I was 5, and I lived there until I was 18 and then I went to college.
Q: What were some of the things you did for fun?
A: Uh I mean Wayland being a small town there wasn’t much to do there. It really was a lot of playing sports with my friends, hanging out at different friends’ houses. Now, whenever we go back we go to the Chateau (The Dudley Chateau) aka the Chat hang out and have a few beverages, but not a whole lot to do.
Q: Did you play any sports?
A: I did. I played football, basketball, and baseball. I played a little lacrosse. So now I still play a little bit of baseball, play a little bit of league softball and play a lot of golf.
Q: Where did you go for college?
A: I went to Rollins College; it’s a small liberal arts school right outside of Orlando in a town called Winter Park, Florida.
Q: And what was your major?
A: History major, really liked it. It wasn’t my first choice going in but it ended up being a really good choice. I really enjoyed the classes that I took.
Q: What made want to switch from history to broadcasting and sports?
A: Sports broadcasting has always been a passion of mine, and something that’s been in the back of my mind. Something that I’ve always wanted to do but never had the true motivation to actually take the necessary steps to do it and I found that motivation late last year and started to apply to Newhouse and if I got in great and if not then you re-evaluate where I was going to head. I got in and now I’m here and now it’s time to chase the dream.
Q: That’s good and now what do you want to do after you graduate from Newhouse?
A: I think the beauty of this program and kind of me being new to kind of like news and sports in general in a formal way anyway is I can really learn and see what I’m actually good at within the industry. I know that I want to be in the industry in some capacity. My initial thoughts play by play but you know, if I end up being a better anchor or a reporter then so be it, but I don’t want to close any doors for myself. That’s like a long way of saying that I don’t really necessarily know but I’m just excited to be here and excited for opportunities to start presenting themselves.
Q: And then you said that after college you went back to your home state, what did you do before you decided you wanted to apply to grad school?
A: How much time you got? So after college, I spent a little bit of time at home kind of job hunting, flirting with the idea of getting my teaching certificate and being a history teacher. I ended up getting a job in the United States Senate, in Washington D.C. so I moved down there and worked in the Senate for about 11 months and then the member I was working for didn’t get re-elected and then chose to leave the hill and work at a military non-profit and I ran programs for them for about 2 years. Did a lot of work in NASCAR which was fun. Taking troops to NASCAR races and kind of just generally raising awareness for PTSD and TBI and what those guys are going through. So really great experience and someone from a small town Massachusetts you know, military culture isn’t that big, but when you go down into the South, you meet those good people and their military families it was a very enlightening experience. I moved back home to Boston worked in advertising for 2 years. I thought I could see myself in that career but it didn’t go the way I wanted it to go. Then if you’re going to switch gears again, you’ll want to switch to something that you really want to do and that’s when I decided to apply to Newhouse.
Q: With NASCAR, was it for people in the military or people that had retired?
A: Both
Q: Will you explain the program a little bit more?
A: Yeah. So it is called NASCAR Troops to the Track and they still run it up to this day, not with the non-profit that I was with. Essentially there would be about 24 races that they would do every year and the race would have to be in the general, vicinity of a military base. You know there is military bases everywhere so like the Daytona 500 we would do MacDill Air force Base from Tampa. Basically, if there was a military base near the race, we would take troops, about 10 to 20. It would be my job to be like the liaison between NASCAR and the military bases to make sure there were troops to go and once the troops were there, that they were having a good time. So I just got to hang out and hear their stories and it was a pretty cool experience. I ran a race dedication program with Kurt Busch where he would honor a fallen soldier on his car every race and every once in a while we would be able to get the family out to the race and I would like take them around, show them the decal on the car with their son’s name on it and it was really a touching experience and getting to see the happiness on their faces when they see their son’s name on the car, even if the car got wrecked in the race, it was pretty special.
No comments:
Post a Comment