[00:00:14] Speaker A: Hello, welcome to the Roundhouse Podcast with Paul Sullentrop of Wichita State University Strategic Communications. Thanks very much for listening. Kat Ramirez is our guest today. Kat is creative service manager for Wichita State Athletics. And this is just a fascinating field which is really growing in importance, growing in staffing all over the country. If you're on social media, you see the work of these people at colleges and universities all around. And we're going to talk about how Kat in Wichita State does it. She started at WSU in 2023. She has built the team into one with two content producers, Willie Schwanke and Brian Barnes. She has 11 interns working for her. Ten of them are Wichita State students. One is a future WSU student. So those are the people that if you're at a game, they're the ones running around with the video cameras, with the cameras documenting everything, start to finish, and putting out all the social media content. This group is responsible for the video, the photo, the graphics that fans see on social media and in the arena. And that would range from something like a graphic when Lauren Lucas is named softball conference player of the week to your intro videos at Koch Arena. Game highlights updates. So if you're following the Shockers on social media, you know the work of this team. Kat, tell us about your background and how you got into this field.
[00:01:33] Speaker B: Yeah, so I've been doing this for 12 years professionally. I have a little different kind of upcoming to where I'm at. I have my associate's degree, most people have a bachelor's, but I went to a technical school in Texas, TSTC in Waco. And I'm more of a visual person, a very hands on person. So that was a perfect technical school. You know, didn't come out with no debt, just, you know, able to afford it, coming from a low income family. So decided to go back home and started my own business. And that's kind of, you know, everybody in my field as creatives, we kind of go to the YouTube university as everybody likes to call it. So, you know, tutorials online, just actually just seeing something and maybe replicating it. And then I grew my business, worked it for seven years, was very successful and kind of reached an age to where I didn't want to be a high volume sports photographer. So I worked with a lot of little league teams, high school teams, and decided this was not where I wanted my career to end. So I took the leap and applied and luckily I fell at Frisco with the Frisco Rough Riders. So I spent the summer of 2023 with them. And then of course it was seasonal so I had to look somewhere and I ended up in Kansas. I had never been to Kansas at all until I actually had.
After I was offered the position accepted, I took a trip up here and it was kind of eye opening and kind of when I, you know, walking down to Koch the court, I was like, oh my gosh, this is for real. You know, this is a few months ago. I was running my own business to now working with probably one of the most unique brandings in sports athletics and being able to the chance to grow it and to build something off of it.
[00:03:29] Speaker A: What did you study at the technical school?
[00:03:31] Speaker B: So I studied media communication and information. So I have a little bit of radio, photo and video and also television.
[00:03:42] Speaker A: So you mentioned the Frisco Rough Riders, a AA affiliated. The Rangers. They're in the Texas League with the Wichita Wind Surge. We'll talk about the benefits and the challenges of working in baseball students. I think that's a really important part of this. Obviously that's part of Wichita State's mission is giving these kids skills applied learning and putting them on on the track to a career. How do you find the students who want to work in this field?
[00:04:06] Speaker B: Oh, just a little backstory on our internship program. On the creative side.
Last year we had five and they were only game days. So they would only come out and shoot with us on home game days. And that's talking all sports.
And one of my goals was when I got my kind of promotion here was that we need to up that they need to be in the office with us. They need to be working daily with us and not only to grow them as creators, but also to help us build, you know, the look of the whole brand of all across all Sports. We have 16 teams, so three people trying to cover 16 teams does get a little difficult, especially when we're on the road. But kind of the kids I look for and the students I look for are the ones that are kind of what I see myself in. The ones that love to that are always hungry, they always want to learn. They're, you know, they, they want to try new things. They look at the whole brand as a whole and kind of buy into the mission of what we're trying to do. You know, whether it's fear the wheat, whether it's the mission with volleyball, you know, just kind of buying into each sport and that's kind of how I look at it as a manager. But yeah, that's kids are great. Skill level, of course, comes into it. I have a variety of skill levels on my team. I have students who've only been doing it for five months. And then I have students that have been with Wichita state athletics for three plus years.
So as us, as full timers, we have to, you know, get them to the point to where if we send them out to do something, they're able to do it. But they're also still learning and still growing as creative.
[00:05:46] Speaker A: So it's structured very much like what you might think of A newsroom was 10, 20 years ago when there were a lot of people in there. You have people that are assigned to essentially beats. They have a sport and they deal with that sport. How do you organize this group? How do you get them pointed in the right direction when there's, you know, spring weekend here can be crazy. There may be baseball, softball, track, tennis, all going on in the same time.
[00:06:09] Speaker B: Yeah. So in the past year we've really put in creative meetings on Mondays. We kind of start off our week like that and we go over two weeks of block of, you know, what activities we have. We don't just do games, we do events going on with the whole department. We do any community events. You know, we cover all that. So we kind of break it down. And luckily I have certain interns who are in charge of certain sports and they're usually my go to for them. But everything else is kind of open to whatever everybody's schedule is.
So that's how we do. We start off Monday, pretty much meeting 8:15 in the morning. Some of them are, you know, they're young, they're students, they don't want to wake up that early. But I kind of told them this is kind of the norm in the creative, you know, kind of professional world. So you kind of get used to it and be prepared. So when they do go out to, you know, their actual jobs after school, that they're already prepared and they're already ready to go. But Mondays look like that. And then we kind of assign them and then we just kind of, you know, communication in our department is very key. We have to depend on communications from our sids. We have to depend on communication from marketing, from development. You know, so that's what I instill in my kids. So if anything were to go wrong or anything, scheduling wise, communication, like they just communicate it to me, but they're pretty on top of it.
[00:07:39] Speaker A: Communication, teamwork, those would be the soft skills we like to talk about at Wichita State University. That can be very important. So if I'm a Student. And maybe I'm interested in social media or I like working with the camera.
How do I get on this team? Or how do I look into it?
[00:07:54] Speaker B: Yeah, so they easily can reach my email. It's on the website.
I had one kid, funny story, came in this past year, first day of school, and I was around the office, and they're like, hey, Kat, this kid is looking for you. And I was like, oh, hi. Like, I've never met this kid before. And he's like, oh, my name's, you know, Matthias. And I don't know if you're the right person, but I would like the chance to kind of see if I could be a part of this athletic department. He's like, I do photo, I do video. And sometimes it happens like that. And he's been one of our rock stars of the year. So I guess that kind of shows creatives kind of just. You kind of go out, have to go out there and get what you want or look for what you want. So you can't always expect for it to come to you. So. But that's.
That's a crazy story that happened, but definitely I'm easy reachable through my email. And if, you know, like, if you just want to shadow a game or just see if this is what you want. Some people come in and they're like, actually, I don't want to do content producing, but I want to be a broadcaster or I want to be, you know, an sid. They see the different spots, so it's able to kind of give them, like, a look in what we do.
[00:09:09] Speaker A: Why do you enjoy working with students?
[00:09:11] Speaker B: Oh, I love it because I didn't have that while I was, you know, developing as a young creative. And I'm a very person. Like, my personality is.
I treat everybody the same. It doesn't matter if they're the janitor. It doesn't matter if, you know, if they're my boss. Everybody's the same. And that's kind of how I feel with creatives interns is, you know, I want to be able to know what I should have had and, you know, kind of what I could have had if I would have gone for four years to college. But that's just how I kind of love working with kids, is because I want to be that mentor that I wish I had and then kind of instill that in them so when they get into my position, they're able to play it back.
[00:09:57] Speaker A: Kat, you work with senior content producer Willie Schwanke. He's a former pitcher on the shocker baseball team and content producer Brian Barnes. I think both of them have a really good eye for the videos that you see, the highlights, the pre game hype videos, that kind of stuff. They also do a lot of photography work for you. Describe their roles in this team.
[00:10:18] Speaker B: Yeah, so along with the interns, they're helping them out, they're teaching them, mentoring them.
You know, we kind of split up the sports, each basically full timers. What we call each other is. I'm in charge of women's basketball, track, cross country and tennis is all both tennis. And then Willie's in charge of men's basketball.
He has baseball. And then Brian's in charge of volleyball. Softball and also bowling is kind of mixed in there with everybody. Willie's also in charge of golf.
So that's kind of how we just divide and conquer together.
So if an intern is with, let's just say volleyball, they'll answer to Brian. Brian. If we give him any projects for volleyball, Brian will delegate who gets what.
That's just kind of how we work together as we divide and conquer.
[00:11:15] Speaker A: So you talked a lot about getting to know the teams and getting familiar with them. Willie being a former baseball player, can you tell that that helps him?
[00:11:22] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, definitely. It helps him be able to see both parts. Like I said, relationships is a big thing with, you know, earning from the players and the coaches and just staff in general. So having somebody on the team who was on the other side and kind of knows how to, you know, an athlete, what they're looking for and kind of reach him in a different level. And especially I know he has a very tight bond with baseball.
So it makes it a whole lot easier for him to come into a shoot, whatever it is, and kind of say, hey, I was in your shoes, you know, a few years ago and I kind of know what you're going through and I'm just here to help you.
[00:12:01] Speaker A: He definitely speaks the lingo. Take us through a typical game day. Let's say men's basketball team plays at 6:30. What's the routine?
[00:12:11] Speaker B: Yeah, so I'll give you my kind of game day schedule. It really just depends on, you know, what your responsibility is. But since I am in charge of graphics, I have to make sure marketing is, you know, up to date with anything they need to run in the arena. I got to make sure scheduling people are showing up, things like that. We do shot lists so marketing will send us stuff that, hey, we really need the sponsor. We really need these things. We make sure we upload it so they're able to show to share it. On social.
We get shot lists from sids that hey, this player, it's their birthday. Or for example the pink game. We had some players write family members who you know that they wanted to remember on that game. So the SID said hey, I would really love photos of their shoes or something like that.
So just make sure that's communicated to whoever I need to. And then usually for men's basketball, let's say we have a two hour arrival time. So everybody has to report two hours before the game. That's where we set up. We get our computers ready, we kind of get our equipment ready. You never know, something can happen in the split second. So two hours give us enough time to either fix a problem or find out what's the issue.
And then it's kind of once you get here, it's non stop for the next three to four hours during the game. We're uploading, we're editing. It just depends on if you're photo or video.
For men's game we usually have three to four people there since it's, you know, one of the most busiest sports we have. And they usually take turns to edit, to take photos and then for after the game, usually depending on if we win, depending on if something crazy happen, usually video people are editing. I'm usually, you know, editing photos last minute stuff that we get at the end and then that kind of just wraps up our game day and then we do it again the next day or kind of come into the office the next day and either review what we did before or usually also uploading photos for the students, athletes to have to share on their socials as well.
[00:14:30] Speaker A: I always think that people don't, they love great sports photography. They probably don't appreciate how difficult it is to capture all that, all that motion and emotion. Give me an estimate. How many pictures might someone take during a basketball game and how many might be edited and judged good enough to use?
[00:14:48] Speaker B: Yeah, so I would say probably, I would say I would take about maybe 500 photos, you know, depending on if it's a busy game or not. And you're maybe looking at a quarter of those photos that are going to be usable.
Yeah, sometimes with photography it's all about right place, right time. You might be at a spot for one quarter and you move and you wish you were back at that spot. It's just, it just one of those things where you have to know the game, you have to know your players. That's a big Thing with us is we have to know, like, for instance, Quincy, we know he likes to dunk, so we know we always have to have somebody either up in the stands, somebody down low to be able to get different variations of that dunk.
I'm trying to think of what else we can think of.
Let's say, what's another team that would be good.
[00:15:42] Speaker A: How about softball and documenting Addison Barnard last year.
[00:15:46] Speaker B: So that one, you know, you have to have somebody on home plate while they're up to bat. That's no ifs, ands, or buts. And then also maybe somebody who is also ready to get a home run coming in. And they usually are yelling or something.
So our Coach throws the Hi2 at them. So you always have to know kind of your teams. You have to build a relationship with them and kind of watch the game. Not only know it as, like, you know, strikes outs, you know, safe, but you also have to know your team and kind of how they react to the game. So. But yeah.
[00:16:21] Speaker A: Yeah. So for those who are not familiar with Shocker, softball coach Christy Breadbenner coaches third base. Her routine going back many years now is to throw a little hi chew candy to whoever as they're rounding the bases. So that's always a good. Always a good photo opportunity. Describe the growth in this field, the investments that colleges and pro teams are making in the video, the graphics, the social media.
[00:16:44] Speaker B: Yeah, the thing I put with my interns is we touch a lot with athletics.
We were part of ticketing, we're part of marketing, we're part of recruiting, we're part of development, Whether it's students, whether it's development, as in fundraising. We touch everything. And all those things that we touch kind of bring in money. So I feel like now kind of athletic brands are kind of noticing that, like, if we invest a little bit more. Of course, everybody's following a budget. Everybody's trying to, you know, stick to it.
But we have always, as creative, gotten kind of like, well, we just need one person. And it's like, no, we touch. I mean, I just listed all five different things. I'm probably missing a lot more. But if you invest a little bit and you have the right team, your return is gonna be greater than you would ever thought by just giving creatives that little respect. And kind of like, we trust you because you're holding our brand. And if you didn't have any photographers, you wouldn't see that Quincy dunk. You wouldn't see Addison, you know, being the only NCAA player to, you know, hit, what, 90 stolen bases? She hit a lot of runs. Yeah.
[00:17:59] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:02] Speaker B: So it's kind of like, yes, you could do it with one person, but are you really getting the quality that you should be getting? But that's kind of how I see it now is kind of. And luckily, Kevin has really kind of seen, like, our productivity and really believes in what we do and understands that as a shocker brand, we're not just one team. We're not just two teams. We're a whole brand, and we have great athletes across all 16 sports.
So it's kind of just, you know, sending that one photographer to tennis that we may have not sent years past because there was only three of us. It's just the little things kind of come back more than you would ever know.
[00:18:41] Speaker A: Kevin Saul, the athletic director of Wichita State, is who you mentioned. Yeah. You are among the people who make the first impression on recruits when they come to Koch arena or the different venues around campus. How do you approach being that part of that process?
[00:18:54] Speaker B: Yeah, we just kind of.
I take it as being a kind of homey feeling. You know, you want to welcome them. You want to show them what shocker experience is about. You want to show them that we. We want to get to know them. We want to build them as a brand themselves. I mean, with, you know, athletes now that are. They have their own brands, and we appreciate that, and we want to grow that, and we want to help them. So it's just more of just giving them that home. Like, hey, like, you're our family now. Like, you know, we want you to be here. We want to see you grow. We want to see you just develop to a great athlete, but also a great person and a great student.
So I just feel like with recruiting, it's kind of. It's fun for me because they're young kids, and you can just see, you know, when they go into our studio and they see our big old backdrop, they're like, oh, my gosh, I saw this in social media, and they're like, I'm actually in front of it. And that's the same kind of view that I, when I first came here, was like, I was like, oh, my gosh, I'm in here. I'm in the studio. Like, this is actually happening. So I kind of had the same.
Kind of have the same view that they did, you know, that I did whenever they show up. So it's just more of just kind of welcoming them and getting them used to. Of like, hey, we're gonna be around and we're gonna. We're gonna support you, and we're gonna, you know, showcase you to the world.
[00:20:17] Speaker A: Within an athletic department, you're gonna have coaches whose comfort level on social media with all of this is.
I guess there may be some who are still around, who aren't totally comfortable with it. How do you work with them? How do you kind of talk them through it, build their trust that, hey, we can do good things for you?
[00:20:34] Speaker B: Yeah, I feel like all our coaches are. They know the value of what we're doing, and they know the value of social media. They know the value of it in recruiting.
I just think that what I've noticed is that we deal with coaches that are like, well, we didn't know we could ask. Or, you know, like, just because it was such a small team that it's kind of like it was pushed to the side. But I've been like, no, let's help you get the best athletes we can and help you grow this program.
So it's just kind of getting people to say, hey, we're ready to roll. You just gotta come knock in. Like, and just being open to them and kind of saying, like, no, we're just as invested in these athletes just as you are. So.
[00:21:16] Speaker A: So you are dealing with constant deadlines. You know, we need our graphics after each quarter. We need. If we hit a home run, we want to see that replay immediately on Twitter. How do you deal with the constant deadlines and the speed that is necessary during a game or a match?
[00:21:31] Speaker B: I think teamwork kind of helps with that.
Like I said, we usually have athletes. We try to. I mean, we. We usually have interns join us on big games. So we usually have two to two to three people, depending on the sport.
So we kind of already. You have an unspoken, like, unspoken language between creatives where if, you know, somebody hit a home run or, you know, something crazy just happened on the court, you know, video is gonna go get it. You know, like, and especially with sids, we have unspoken kind of language of, like, I can just look at Steph Wright, who's our SID for women's basketball, and I could be on one court, one side of the court, and she could be at the table, and we just look at each other, and I already know, okay, she wants it. I'm gonna go edit. And luckily, I have interns there that can shoot, you know, and fill in when I need to. So I feel like teamwork really helps with deadlines and also just being able to have the extra people to say, you know, What? I can't make it to tennis because I have this deadline with graphics and just kind of entrusting it with other duties to other people.
[00:22:42] Speaker A: So as you mentioned, your path is not typical. You're self taught with a lot of this stuff. Work for minor league baseball. How do you think that background helps.
[00:22:50] Speaker B: You Minor league baseball? I tell all my interns, if you definitely want to kind of test yourself as a creative, minor league is definitely the way to go. One summer with the Frisco Rough Riders was not only crazy, but it was valuable. I learned so much from my director of marketing, Kristen King and our social media girl, Alexandra Salcedo.
Definitely is a grind. It is long days, 16 plus hours. Of course I was in Frisco. So dead of summer heat was crazy. You know, 100 plus degrees.
But you kind of just, you learn so much from it, not only as a creative, but just working with other people and kind of building that bond of yes, there are long days, but we have each other and we're a team and we're gonna get through it no matter what. And I feel like I've brought that to the creative services with my interns and my content producers is like I always tell them, look, if you're down, I'm gonna be 10 toes deep with you. I'm gonna be down in the trenches with you.
I'm not asking you to do something that I wouldn't do. So that's just kind of the mentality that I got from minor league is kind of we're just going to push through whatever happens and we're going to finish.
[00:24:12] Speaker A: Yeah, baseball would be a great training ground. Just the day today never stops. Definitely. Do you have a favorite photograph that you've taken?
[00:24:20] Speaker B: Oh. Oh, that's hard. That is very hard.
[00:24:23] Speaker A: I like to throw hard ones at people every once in a while. What's the one you look at and you say, I was in the right place at the right time and I really nailed that.
[00:24:29] Speaker B: I'm going to change that around on you a little bit. I'd say the photo that I always think about and kind of grew my love of photography, that it just always holds a, just a soft spot in my heart. Is my senior year of high school.
I was the manager for the softball team and I took a photo. We won, I think we won the game that clinched playoffs for us. And my classmates were out there, people were on top of each other, just kind of cheering and that kind of always just held a place in my heart. And I was, you know, looking Back, I'm like, that's when I knew this is what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a photographer. I wanted to be, you know, I wanted to do something creative, but in the sports realm.
So it wasn't the greatest. I took it off like a Canon power shot, so not the camera I'm using now, but it was just kind of like a point and shoot camera. But it's all I could afford at the time. And it just always holds a place in my heart. Of course, you know, if you were to look back at it, you'd be like, yeah, that's not. It was off centered. Like, there's so many technical to it, but just the meaning behind it was like, that's when I knew that I wanted to do this.
[00:25:46] Speaker A: Your reputation around the department, we've talked about it here in the previous 20 minutes. All these sports matter.
Why, why, why is tennis. Why is getting out to golf? Why is spring volleyball? Why does. Why do those things matter to you and to this department?
[00:26:00] Speaker B: Yeah, so I've always been the underdog.
I rode the bench all through high school playing sports, you know, being a woman in this kind of career field, always the underdog. And I feel like the smaller teams, I mean, look at tennis, they just beat Kentucky in a crazy, crazy game, a crazy match. And it's kind of like if we didn't put that, if that didn't matter to us, we would not have any content from it. We wouldn't be able to showcase how hard these athletes work, you know, just because they're not on Koch arena or anything like that. But, I mean, they work just as hard or maybe even harder. You never know. But it's kind of like I want to tell their stories and I want my team to tell their stories and kind of, you know, maybe it resonates in, you know, a Shocker Nation fan that hasn't been here for a while or somebody new, somebody who's, you know, maybe just learning tennis, and they're like, you know what? I actually like this great player, you know, whether it's men or women. And I would have never have known about it. So it's just kind of growing Shocker Nation to what it used to be. It may not be for a certain sport, it may be for the whole brand. I'm just here to grow Shocker Nation.
[00:27:16] Speaker A: That was Friday out at Wichita Country Club, and that was a really nice, really nice night. Good crowd. And the good thing about tennis, you can be right there. It's very, very accessible, and it's a good thing to get out, too. Okay. We know social media is kind of this constant brawl for attention and clicks and eyeballs and all that kind of stuff. What are your strategies for grabbing as much of that as you can for Wichita State?
[00:27:44] Speaker B: Oh, man, that's a good question.
Coming from minor league, you're selling a fan experience, you know, so you have to give that fan kind of that view of that fan. You know, if you were sitting in that chair or if you were, you know, up in the stands, you know, seeing the Quincy dunk, just kind of giving them that view of this is where you could be, you know, you should join us next time and just kind of growing that. So that's how I. I kind of look at it.
[00:28:18] Speaker A: What's your favorite sport?
[00:28:20] Speaker B: My favorite sport, I would say football, but since we do not have football, I would say, oh, man, I love track. I'm loving track. I'm in charge of kind of day to day stuff with track, so.
Definitely didn't think. I ran track my eighth grade year and that was my track career.
But I've definitely loved to. To watch it and to just watch these athletes kind of just go out there and give their, you know, they got three tries or they got, you know, one run and they just kind of have to leave it on the line. And I feel like that's just kind of.
It just sets it to a whole new level of just seeing them, like they have to compete. You know, they don't get an hour long, you know, time to make a basket. You know, these athletes get three tries and that's it. Like, there's nothing else. If you're on, you're on. If you're not, then you're not.
[00:29:16] Speaker A: Track is very entertaining. The nice thing about Track is with 100, 120 people, there's always something interesting going on. Definitely.
What's your favorite sport to shoot? Video or pictures?
[00:29:27] Speaker B: Ooh, I say right now, I would say women's basketball. I'm also in charge of them.
I've grown to know them personally and kind of kind of off the court. And, you know, it's nice when you go into the locker room or, you know, translate it to the court. They kind of have that trust between you and they're able to express themselves even more.
So I feel like women's basketball is definitely fun to shoot. And they know if I have a camera, they're always playing to the camera.
[00:30:03] Speaker A: What's the most challenging sport to document?
[00:30:06] Speaker B: Challenging sport to document.
Who?
I'd say golf, because I haven't done it here. Of course, they're kind of not on campus, so it's a little hard to kind of figure out when a perfect time to go shoot them is. But definitely it'd be fun to shoot, but I haven't gotten the chance, so I would say that's the most difficult.
[00:30:29] Speaker A: Who is the sports team, college professional that you steal ideas from most often?
[00:30:34] Speaker B: Oh, I get inspiration from a lot of.
[00:30:37] Speaker A: Inspiration is a nicer way of saying it.
[00:30:39] Speaker B: Yeah, I get inspired inspirations from a lot of different teams.
I'd say. I've always said this. I feel like college athletic, kind of creatives, kind of push the envelope a little bit. And then of course, you see it kind of go into professional sports. But I feel like with college athletics, you're able to do a little bit more, have a little bit more fun. Just because people are always trying to meme something or they're always trying to, you know, up the next. They're always trying to recruit. That's. That's. I think that's a big thing now is like, instead of, you know, it used to be about the meme, now it's like, you know, take USC football, where they had, like, that crazy kind of intro for the recruits, where they did it on the big screen and they. I mean, luckily they have, like, one of the best film schools in the nation and able to use that resource, but just kind of pushing that envelope of, like, trying to get people into, you know, to join your college or university. So I feel like. I still feel like USC on the graphic side is definitely good. They have a good branding. I love Boston College branding.
And then I would say I'm trying to think of other places. I'd say professionally, I'd say the Chargers. The Los Angeles Chargers are a good one.
Oh, I'm trying to think of what other. Let's see, a baseball team.
I'm not. I don't watch too much baseball, but I'm trying to think hockey's. Hockey graphic designs are crazy. The Panthers are really good. I think they're called Panthers.
[00:32:19] Speaker A: Florida Panthers.
[00:32:20] Speaker B: Yeah, the Hurricanes. They're always pushing the game day kind of graphics look to them.
So I look for inspiration through from professional to. I've even seen some high school graphic designers that are pushing the envelope and doing something different in high school athletics.
[00:32:39] Speaker A: So 10 or 12 years ago, they put a GoPro on the forehead of Zach Bush. He was a basketball player here, 2013, 14, 15. And I was like, that was a big deal.
What's the New technology that you're excited about?
[00:32:53] Speaker B: Oh, I feel a big thing now recently is the. It's kind of the drone through the stadium kind of thing. I know the Boston Red Sox did.
Takes a lot of planning and scheduling. And I know we've, we've kind of talked about it too, of doing something like that with coke to have like, kind of show people like a game day experience. But of course, you know, have it scripted, kind of have it. You know, I feel like that's probably one of the things that we would like to try, but I feel like that's a big kind of trend is doing that kind of showing fans kind of in one big swoop of game day or shocker, you know, shocker athletics.
[00:33:35] Speaker A: So how many times have you been sprayed by water or Gatorade during a locker room celebration?
[00:33:42] Speaker B: Once, so far.
That was when Terry Nooner won his first game last year.
And then I got a lot of. I'm sorry, Cat, I'm sorry. I was like, no, it's okay. You just. Do you like, don't worry. This is why I'm here. So only once.
[00:33:59] Speaker A: Only once.
[00:33:59] Speaker B: Only once.
[00:34:00] Speaker A: Terry is the women's basketball coach at Wichita State. When you take pictures, especially at media day, content day, you need athletes who want to scream and flex and jump around for videos, for pictures. Do you have a strategy for somebody who might be a little reluctant to emote?
[00:34:17] Speaker B: Yeah, I usually start. I mean, like I said, I started off in high volume kind of sports photography, so I kind of had to work. With small children, you just kind of have to ease them into it. You kind of have to build that trust. You know, with high volume kind of little league kids, you have to build it in like two minutes because you have to move on to the next one. But luckily, like, some of these athletes we know, like I said, we meet them in recruit shoots. So I know there's one kid from track Jet, I don't remember his last name. I did his recruit shoot and on content day, I was like, you're already here. And he's like, yeah, and you remembered me. So, kind of like building that relationship with the athletes is so, so important to us, but it's all about just getting them comfortable and just kind of like letting them know, like, we're not going to make you look bad, because if we make you look bad, it makes us look bad. We're gonna do the best job we can and just kind of building that with them.
[00:35:11] Speaker A: Okay, this is the question I've been waiting to ask. How many Ways. Can you make an athlete getting off a bus look fresh?
[00:35:18] Speaker B: Ooh, well, you can throw black and white on it.
You can use reflections, you can use low angles, high angles. You could be in the bus, you could be outside the bus. Last year, I shot women's basketball leaving. I can't remember where, but it was raining and the door was open on the bus. So I used the. The kind of window with the water around it and used it as kind of like showcasing, like, oh, they're leaving here, Wichita. You know, everybody that lives in Wichita probably knew it was raining. So they're like, okay, they're actually leaving today, you know, right now. Kind of give people like, they're actually in that moment.
[00:35:58] Speaker A: We wichitons love it when people enjoy our city. You're new, but you've been here long enough. Do you have a favorite restaurant, a favorite brewery, coffee shop? What have you enjoyed about our city?
[00:36:07] Speaker B: I'll give you two. I really enjoy Taco TJ's, that's on rock Road. That makes me. Gives me a little bit of taste of home, just because I'm from South Texas and I would say Station 8 barbecue. So basically, things that, that I miss from Texas are the. My favorite places here.
[00:36:29] Speaker A: I've not been to Station 8, but I've heard it's just incredible.
[00:36:32] Speaker B: It's good.
[00:36:32] Speaker A: You've got to get there, like, early, stand in line. They run out at 2:00.
[00:36:37] Speaker B: Yeah, sometimes I get there at 1:30 and I'm like, please be open, please. And luckily, the last two times that I've gone, they've been open and they've had food.
[00:36:45] Speaker A: So what do you get at Station eight?
[00:36:47] Speaker B: Oh, brisket. They're.
I think they call them hot links. And then they have a good Mac and cheese. That's a really good one. But yeah, just the normal briskets and salt and hot links.
[00:37:01] Speaker A: Yeah. I've been negligent in not Getting to station 8. Do you have a book, a podcast, something that you would recommend for the people to check out?
[00:37:08] Speaker B: Ooh, a book. I don't have a book or podcast.
I would just kind of.
People just look at social media, just look at sports teams and kind of what they're doing and know that there's somebody, whether it's a tweet, whether it's a photo, whether it's a video, there's somebody's hard work put into it. And whether you think it's good or not, we're all following a brand. We're all following, you know, steps in trying to help our brands. And I feel like just people being able to see, like, the hard work that was put into it and just kind of knowing that, you know, the person behind that really believes in what they're doing because, you know, if they knew actually how much work is put into it, they probably wouldn't even do them themselves. But, you know, when I spend hours on a graphics, because I love whatever team I'm working with, I love the Shocker brand. So just kind of just looking on social media and, and just thinking more of just like, oh, I liked it, or not just thinking about the person that actually made it.
[00:38:13] Speaker A: Let's say your high school invites you to come back and talk to some students who are maybe interested in this field. What's your advice?
[00:38:21] Speaker B: Yeah, I like to shout out my actual. My multimedia teacher, Ms. Hudspeth. She kind of. She saw me doing photography and she really mentored me my four years and luckily she nominated me for a scholarship in the whole technology kind of area and I was able to get a scholarship with that. So shout out Ms. Husband.
I would just tell them I came from a small town, 3,000 people, three stoplights, so not a lot of money to go around. I picked up a camera because my sister had it around.
I would just say, don't. It doesn't matter where you come from, doesn't matter if you're in a big school, small school, if you can shoot it on your phone, shoot it on a nice big camera, just shoot it. Just learn, just pick up something.
Nothing's going to stop your dream. If you want to do this, just do it. There's, you know, of course, there may be kind of bumps in the road, but it doesn't change. It doesn't change your dream. It just means it takes a little bit longer. It just means you detour.
[00:39:21] Speaker A: Okay. Ms. Hudspeth, at what high school did you go to?
[00:39:24] Speaker B: Taft High School. Taft high school Greyhound.
[00:39:26] Speaker A: Ms. Hudspet. Ms. Hudspeth. Great story. Those teachers are really important. Kat Ramirez, she is the creative service manager for Wichita State athletics. Thanks very much for your time.
[00:39:35] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:39:51] Speaker A: Hi, this is Rick Muuma, president of Wichita State University. Check out the latest episode of the Forward Together podcast. Each episode I sit down with different guests from Shocker Nation to celebrate the vision and mission of Wichita State University. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
Thank you for listening to the Roundhouse podcast courtesy of Wichita State University Strategic Communications. We encourage you to rate, review and subscribe. Wherever you get your podcasts, you can find more roundhouse
[email protected] it's over. It is over, ladies and gentlemen. Say it slowly and savor it. Wichita State is going. Going to the Final Four for the first time in 48 years. Unbelievable. What a scene, folks.
[00:40:54] Speaker B: The Shocker fans are just going crazy in the stands.
[00:40:58] Speaker A: Just maybe the greatest win in the history of Wichita State basketball.
