About

It all started one cold December night at the 2009 Champs Sports Bowl in Orlando, Florida.

While watching a post-season showdown between the Wisconsin Badgers and Miami Hurricanes, I was approached by a guy in his mid-thirties who proceeded to ask me who I was and what media group I was representing along the sidelines that night.

In truth, I wasn’t there for any particular group, I explained.  I’d been given the opportunity to be at the game that night – almost begrudgingly – instead of being allowed at the contest I really wanted to attend – the 2010 Gator Bowl, where Bobby Bowden and my Florida State Seminoles would take on the University of West Virginia in what was to be Bowden’s last game.  I saw this more or less as a consolation prize, but, in reality, I didn’t have any real interest in doing much more than taking a few photographs and fighting off the throngs of Miami fans that taunted me for daring to wear a Florida State sweatshirt to the contest.

The gentleman that approached me – I thought he wanted a date – chuckled a bit at my answer and introduced himself as the head of a local Florida-based independent sports media group that was not only covering the UW / UM match up, but also had somehow been lucky enough to get credentialed for the FSU / WVU game just a week later.  He explained that he had created a group approximately a year earlier with the primary purpose of giving up-and-coming sports journalists and photographers (like myself . . .) the opportunity to prove themselves in an environment just like the one we were in and produce a body of work they could then use to market themselves to mainstream sports media entities like ESPN, Athlon Sports, etc.

The idea intrigued me, and, thankfully, he gave me a card and asked me if I would be interested in trying my hand out with his group.  Initially, I thought little of it – why would someone out of the blue approach me with an offer like this?  But over the next week or two, I realized that he’d seen a passion in me that I’d long harbored but really never taken the time to fully investigate.

The next month and a half flew by, with me learning the ins-and-outs of sports media, including credentialing do’s-and-don’ts, insights as to how to make a (positive) mark in the minds of the sports information directors I’d work with, and in depth instruction on how to make the most out of a digital camera I’d never intended to learn how to use to my advantage.   And before long, I found myself along the sidelines of such marquee events as the 2010 East-West Shrine Bowl and 2010 Under Armour Senior Bowl in Mobile, Alabama, shooting pictures of and interviewing the top seniors in all of college football and the next generation of NFL superstars.

My education as an aspiring sports journalist quickly became an exhausting, but completely rewarding whirlwind of action.  Rarely easy – being a single mother and meeting the other mundane requirements of day-to-day life take enough out of a person – there were certainly plenty of times when I thought that trying to be both a working mother and a member of an independent sports media group was far beyond my means.  But, so too were there moments when I  found myself wanting more to be out on the grass turf of the Florida Citrus Bowl or on the spongy spring of the artificial field at Ladd-Peebles Stadium in Mobile than who I was during the week when I worked in a less-than-attractive green local municipality polo shirt  and when I went to pick up my son from after-school care.  Eventually, I came to terms with both and nuzzled into a new way of life, one in which my past patterns of just being a civil service employee and a parent came to be interlocked with my growth as a writer, photographer, and public relations expert.  I knew that both required my attention, and with a little planning and organization, I could meet the demands of both.

It was that process which recently led me to formulate and bring into the light an idea that the person who first approached me in the south end zone of the Florida Citrus Bowl the night of the Champs Sports Bowl (Wisconsin won that game, by the way) discussed with me along the way.  Dedicated to showing that small, independent media groups could produce well-thought out, written and photographed pieces of traditional sports journalism, he explained to me that he was ultimately driven by wanting to prove that those most figured could never make it into the world of sports journalism could, in fact, do so and do so in impressive fashion.   Individuals like himself, and the four others he worked closely with, had proven a lot of people wrong over the previous year, and scratched their respective ways into prestigious events such as the 2009 ACC Championship Game, the 2010 Under Armour All-American High School Football Game, the 2009 Gridiron Kings Games in Orlando, University of South Florida and Florida State University football, countless collegiate, semi-professional and professional baseball games, and the 2009 NCAA Women’s Volleyball Championships.  His media group was a shining example of what could be accomplished with a dream and a lot of hard work.  It was inspirational and meaningful and served a tremendous purpose in the lives of those it touched – including mine.

It was something I too wanted to be a part of and carry on its legacy – in my own way.

It is with that in mind that I present to you Think Pink Sports Media.  Dedicated to the same premises as the sports media group I mention above, I seek to work within a more narrow focus than that from from which I learned from, focusing on independent sports coverage – but from a female perspective.

Ultimately, I and those who join me here at Think Pink (if you’re a female and interested in writing with us, or a male dedicated to forwarding this cause) will follow the same path of those before us – covering any and all sports we come into contact with and telling the stories of both the most well-known and least-recognized male and female athletes comprising the American sports scene today, from the viewpoint of up-and-coming sports journalists with a real passion for the subjects they cover.

Yet it is my intention to fulfill that promise by working with fellow women like myself, and, in so doing, hopefully opening up the world of sports journalism to a section of society that oftentimes in overlooked due to its gender.

I hope that you will find the work I and others like me produce on this site enjoyable, but also intimately tied with a broader cause.

If you are interested in joining me in that purpose, please don’t hesitate to contact me by email, niki@thinkpinksm.org.