SYRACUSE, N.Y. - At first glance it's easy to detect that Zach Staton is a sports fan. He presents himself often in gym shorts and dry fit tee-shirts bearing the logos of his favorite teams. Being involved in basketball only up to his sophomore year of high school, Staton had no expectation of showcasing his athletic talents on the professional hardwood. Actually, he wouldn't realize his dream until the age of 19 while watching a University of Virginia basketball game.
With the game on the line, Justin Anderson made a sensational block to preserve the win over Maryland. But it wasn't the play so much as the call made by Sean McDonough that gave Staton goosebumps.
"His ability to get out of the way and let the moment breath but also summarize it so well and in so many words, it gave me chills," Staton recalls.
From that day on, Staton was motivated to document compelling sports stories through a play-by-play medium. He is currently pursuing those dreams in the Broadcast and Digital Journalism graduate program at the Newhouse School of Communications at Syracuse University and one day aspires to announce for the NBA and bring his newfound talents and passions back to the familiar hardwood.
To listen to my entire interview with Zach Staton, click the link below.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B5pjKSyrxfq6QkZZREVBdDBiaHM
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Interview Q&A with Zach Staton
Q: I
read your bio, and it started off after high school, so I kinda want to start
off before that. So, tell me about how did you get into sports originally?
A: I
kind of grew up with them, really. My dad is a huge sports fan, and they were
always on in my house, so it just kind of became a thing that I was always
connected to. He is a giant Red Sox fan. The first game, I think I can ever
remember watching was a Yankees Red Sox game, and the Yankees just stomped
them, and for whatever reason I just got connected to sports because of that.
It was just the relationship between me and my dad that kinda got me started.
Q: So
growing up in Virginia you don’t really have a set team. Is that why you went
to the Red Sox or did your father grow up in Boston?
A: No,
my dad’s dad was a Red Sox fan. I don’t know where that came from, and then my
dad was a Red Sox fan and now I’m a Yankee fan, so I’ve kinda ruined the tradition
for them, but we kind of grew up more as college sports fans. Where I was
raised is 45 minutes away from Virginia Tech, and, of course, we bucked
tradition on that one and were huge Virginia fans. So
just getting into sports was more along the lines of first getting your fix on
live high school sports, especially football in my hometown, and then college
scenes grow on you and then as you get older you start getting into more
professional stuff.
Q: Did
you play any sports when you were growing up?
A: I
was a basketball player and baseball player up until middle school and then I
solely concentrated on basketball until my sophomore year of high school and
then I wasn’t any good.
Q: Ok,
fair enough. Let’s move on into college. I saw you have a coaching minor, which
I don’t think I’ve ever seen before. Could you kind of talk me through that?
A:
Yeah, so at Bridgewater I was doing a Communication Studies major, but there
wasn’t a concentration in sports journalism or a concentration where you could
just do sports, so I was volunteering with our athletic media relations just
trying to get that experience, but I wanted something else to kind of sink my
teeth into that could bring more perspective into reporting and more play-by-play
announcing whatever the case may be, so my two options were either business,
because of all the contracts. Every organization in professional sports is a
business or coaching. You can get inside the psychology of what a coach goes
through, how they plan, what the preparation process looks like, and that
interested me more. And plus, if for whatever reason, if somehow, I become a
coach that would be awesome. So, I just decided that the coaching minor would
give me that perspective and would be something interesting because business
didn’t interest me as much as other things would have. This was something that
I’d never studied before, so I wanted to learn and hopefully use that to
whatever I do, reporting or announcing.
Q:
Yeah, I feel like coaching is one of those things, kind of like communications
where the education doesn’t really matter, you know? It’s the experience of
either playing or assisting, but I think that’s really cool that you had the
opportunity to actually look into it and learn the basics of it. So while
you’re at Bridgewater College, you did a lot of play-by-play. What got you into
wanting to do play-by-play over anything else?
A: So
this goes back to a Syracuse alum actually. As big of a Virginia fan as I am,
Sean McDonough was calling a Virginia Maryland game, and he had my favorite
call of all time after Justin Anderson blocked a shot from Maryland and ended
up leading to a 3 down on the other side. It gave me goosebumps. The way he
called it, his ability to get out of the way and let the moment breath but also
summarize it so well and in so many words, it gave me chills, and so I
immediately decided that that’s what I want to do. That’s my dream is to kind
of get to where he’s at. So, to do that you have to volunteer. You gotta just
pound the pavement, work as hard as you can and in any sport that you can. So,
I wasn’t doing play-by-play every single week for football. I’ve done a handful
of them because they had a professional guy do that and basketball, but I had
opportunities to do all the non-revenue sports like lacrosse, or soccer, even
swimming. And through that you work your way up into getting spots in football
games and basketball games. It was just, once I heard Sean McDonough, it was
just over. I knew that that’s what I… I knew I wanted to be like him, which is
weird because I was 19-years-old when I decided, “That’s who I wanna be like!”
Q: So
while you’re doing all this play-by-play for these smaller sports, lacrosse,
soccer, like you said swimming, do you think that expanded your love for sports
or do you think that kind of melded your passion for sports into more “I want
to do some play-by-play” versus the stereotypical “I want to be an athlete when
I grow up?”
A: I
think it probably blended the two. I’ve always loved sports and this was- I was
never going to play them, and there’s no better joy in sports than playing
them. So, there’s either you get into coaching, which I’m already at a
disadvantage with that because I didn’t play or you can announce and you can be
at these games and you don’t have a stake in the games. So, yes there’s stress
and pressure of getting the call right, but it’s more- you get to describe the
game to the viewers. You get to, not necessarily decide the story, but you can
document the story. You can tell other people stories, and that’s something
that’s just always interested me. So I think it just- it blended this passion
that I had for sports with this newfound desire to get involved with
announcing, which became an easy route to just stay involved with sports as
much as possible.
Q: So
you co-hosted The Sports Hotline, which was the first show at Bridgewater,
correct?
A: Yes,
and it was a very dumb name.
Q: How
did that differ from play-by-play announcing?
A:
That’s a lot more opinionated. One of the things that I did with play-by-play
announcing, pretty much, except for maybe a handful of times, I was just by
myself, so I was having to do the play-by-play and some analysis. There was
some opinion in what I was doing, but with hosting a radio show, now your
personality is showing a little bit more. You’re showing your opinions, you’re
getting passionate, you’re getting- or for me I’m very loud and passionate, so
it just gave me the opportunities to explore that realm of broadcasting and
learn how to kind of get my facts straight, interpret them, and then be able to
form an opinion that I could tell to a listening audience. It definitely
differs a little bit, but they’re still enjoyable either way.
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