Joe Trently's Big Start

Lindsay Eastwood

Professor Stomski

SMC 601

07/21/19

The Story of Joe Trently

            Joe Trently, like most American children, grew up playing sports. You could usually find him on the soccer field working on his game growing up. However, in his senior year of High School, Trently swapped his cleats for a mic. Trently, quickly shifted into the role of play by play announcer for his High School football and women’s basketball teams. Calling sports games wasn’t always Trently’s plans, although he did know that he wanted to work in sports in some shape or form. At his small high school in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania there weren’t a lot of opportunities. Trently had to take it upon himself to seek out those opportunities. So, him and his fellow classmates started a news network in his junior year and by his senior year their network had expanded to sports. Trently’s teacher asked that he be one of their lead commentators. Without hesitation he accepted the role. It was no time before he fell in love with this industry. He imagined making a career out of this passion as he says, “when I was calling these games, I’m like, this would be cool to do for a living”. Now Trently, is pursuing his Masters in Broadcast Digital Journalism with a Sports Emphasis, preparing to break in to the industry.

Interview Transcribed https://soundcloud.com/user-432074109/joe-trently-interview

Lindsay: Alright Joe, tell me a little bit about yourself. 

Joe: Alright, so I'm from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, I went to a small town high school. I graduated with 76 kids. So the story I'm basically going off of is why that's important is my high school wasn't really, obviously a sense of it was very small High School. So we didn't have too many opportunities. And I knew I always wanted to do something in sports, as far as you know, when I grew up. And my senior year of high school, while my junior year of high school, we started our news network at our high school. And then my senior year, we branched out and we, I actually was part of the start of our sports network that is there now. And my teacher came to me and asked me to be one of the lead commentators for a lot of the sports. So I was the play by play guy for our football games, because I was a soccer player. So I was able to do that. And then I also covered girls basketball games play by play. And I also did play by play for a baseball team. So I got a lot of opportunities there. And that's kind of where I fell in love. You know, I was thinking to myself in high school, when I was calling these games, I'm like, this would be cool to do for a living. This would be nice to make money off of this. So it kind of stuck with me. And then I went to college. I kind of majored in the wrong thing. I majored in sport management instead of communications or sports communications. But now I'm here and I came here to get more opportunities to branch out more but yeah, it was it was funny to think that a small town high school just you know, calling games where maybe 50 people are watching is what actually got me into this industry and how this is what I really want to do for the rest of my life.