Media at Nationals

[Pierson]

When we talk about team's "getting pulled out to be interviewed," I don't know if this is a media problem or a team problem. As part of human nature, people naturally have ego's and as such want to be on TV, in the Newspaper, or on the Radio.

Is there anything wrong with this? No.

But, what would I suggest? I was recently selected as the Top Youth Volunteer from the State of Washington for the 2004 Prudential Spirit of Community Awards. As part of the program the top High School and Middle Student from each state traveled to Washington DC last week, we had a 30-45 min discussion on "How to Work With/Handle the Media." It was wonderful!

Maybe FIRST should either create a document given to the teams on how to handle the media with lines such as "Yes, I would love to give an interview, but let's move out of the way first" or there should be 2 "Media Reps" on each field. These people would serve as "Media Traffic Cops" and make sure that during the matches interference is kept to a minimum and then after the match is done direct interested media and the team/people being interviewed to a specific part of the field that has a good background but is also out of the way! This would cost FIRST nothing because it would just be another assigned volunteer position.