PORTSMOUTH, Va. (WAVY) – At the end of this coming week, I will wrap up my summer internship at WAVY with the station’s sports department. It’ll be my second time going through the process of an exit interview at the station, sitting down with Stephanie Cooke and debriefing all about my time learning from the likes of Craig Loper, James Kattato and Brian Parsons. As I head into my fourth and final year of college, I am able to look back on my time with WAVY as one of the foundational building blocks that has progressed my career further than I could’ve imagined.
When I was a sophomore at Tidewater Community College in fall of 2024, I decided to take a flier on applying for an internship with WAVY for the upcoming spring semester. I had never taken a college-level class on journalism, broadcasting or any skill that could possibly apply to what I would do as a member of the team at the station. I was fortunate enough to have run an Instagram blog (@colts.report) that posted content all about the Indianapolis Colts of the NFL. Thankfully, I put my page on my application, and sports director Craig Loper thought that my skills in graphic design and the overall production of sports content would translate.
That first internship opened my eyes to so much of what makes journalism, especially sports journalism, so incredible. Following that spring, I transferred to the University of South Carolina, where I took on every opportunity I could get my hands on this past school year. Much, if not all of my familiarity with topics I had not yet learned in class like most of my peers had came from my time at WAVY. It bolstered my confidence, and it helped me feel like I belonged in the Journalism school despite being a transfer student…