Wilcox: Hack encourages everyone to test uncharted waters
Timmy Wilcox arrived at Syracuse unsure of where his aspirations would take him. Reflecting on his experience, he encourages others to take risks. Leonardo Eriman | Daily Orange File Photo
I arrived at Syracuse like many people, unsure where my path would take me. I elected to be a broadcast and digital journalism major and carried an unwavering passion for sports.
I knew I could talk about sports for ages and often surrounded myself with similar people. I knew I wanted to work in sports media, but I just didn’t know which medium I liked best.
Soon, I found myself exploring many different extracurricular activities to test out my fit. Over my first few semesters, I split my time between CitrusTV, Z89 radio, WAER and The Daily Orange as I tried to find a home.
My home surfaced as my freshman year came to a close.
After writing a few feature stories, interviewing NFL star Julian Edelman and landing on the men’s rowing beat, I was hired to be an assistant sports copy editor. Unbeknownst to me at the time, this role served as a launchpad for my sports journalism curiosity.
The intricacies of sports and fact-checking statistics became a strong passion of mine. I found myself devouring stats and factoids that few people knew. Between many late nights on Euclid Avenue to 6 a.m. calls to the Netherlands for the field hockey beat from now-demolished Marion Hall, my love for working at a newspaper grew.
As someone with my major, it was rare to spend so much time away from a microphone, but I stayed the course. I was rehired to be an assistant sports digital editor, which introduced me to the plethora of opportunities available to me on the social media side of operations.
As I look back on the spring of my sophomore year, I was growing as a writer at a faster pace than ever before. I jumped from beat to beat, taking my laptop with me from Tennity Ice Pavilion one night for women’s ice hockey to the JMA Wireless Dome the next morning for women’s lacrosse.
All the while, I was enjoying my time at each game coverage, often conversing with fellow hacks Aiden Stepansky and Justin Girshon and keeping up with those in my major, like Andrew Della Piana and Gino Antimarino, who covered games for CitrusTV.
Though the thought crossed my mind to change my major to magazine, news and digital journalism, I wanted to stay the course and continue improving my on-air and television writing skills simultaneously.
I thought having knowledge of the ins and outs of a newspaper while maintaining my foothold in broadcast media would be best for me. I just couldn’t pick one; I had to feed my passions in each of these areas of sports media.
I enjoyed being different from others who picked one side, and straddled the line between print and broadcast – except when it came to the Media Cup. That’s when everyone knew where my heart was, and I had some fun times wearing that orange shirt, especially when we took home the trophy in my sophomore and senior years.
One of the most transformative moments for me came at the tail end of my junior fall semester. I had just wrapped up the men’s soccer beat and it was unknown what my next beat would be.
That’s when I leaned into my home at The D.O., and Girshon and Stepanksy thought I would enjoy covering the football recruiting beat – uncharted waters at the newspaper established in 1903.
Looking back on that moment, I couldn’t be more grateful. My curiosity surged by the day on that beat.
I found myself tracking Syracuse football’s scholarship offers, recruiting visitors, commitments and so much more. It was awesome carving my own path on a beat that had never been held before at The D.O.
The beat helped me grow my Twitter platform and connect with fans who craved the information I gathered. Those similar types of stats and factoids I discovered as a copy editor, I posted on Twitter and fans devoured them.
I stayed on the beat into the summer and when I was back on campus in the fall, I made Instagram Reels for The D.O. to summarize my monthly findings in the recruiting space – giving me an opportunity to be back in front of a camera like I had practiced for my major.
Over this time, I had developed such a passion for football recruiting that it was time for me to take the next step. I started a football recruiting internship with Mike McAllister at SyracuseOn247, one of the leaders in the local sports news-breaking industry, and it has helped me transform even more.
There, I have been able to continue diving into my passions and discover what I want to do after I graduate. This all comes back to the home I found during my freshman year at The Daily Orange.
The family I was surrounded by on Euclid Avenue helped me discover my own path and molded me into the sports reporter I am today. I will be forever grateful for the opportunities I got, and though there were many sacrifices, I wouldn’t trade them for anything.
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Timmy Wilcox was a senior staff writer for The Daily Orange, where his column will no longer appear. He can be reached at timothywilcox32@gmail.com and on X @TimmyWilcox32.
