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PenPoints newsletter

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Historic Union League Club site for Annual Luncheon

Sportscaster Megan Mawicke shares insights, experience with Awards Luncheon crowd

By Linda Heacox, High School Communications Contest Chair

More than 80 IWPA members and guests heard keynote remarks from Chicago sportscaster Megan Mawicke while honoring the 2008 winners in both the Mate E. Palmer Communications Contest and the High School Journalism Contest on Saturday, May 17, at the Union League Club, Chicago. President Suzanne Hanney presided over the 2008 IWPA Annual Awards Luncheon, while portions of the program were presented by High School Communications Contest Chair Linda Heacox, Palmer Communications Contest Chair Ann Heinrichs and Program Chair Lana Weiss Brown.

Heacox told the audience that the statewide high school contest had attracted more than 300 entries from over 30 schools and thanked the panel of judges, which included editors and journalists as well as university-level educators. She introduced student winners in attendance: Nathan Bishop, Gabriel Bump, Kristy Collazo, Trygve Jensen, Melissa Jordan, Patricia Radkowski, and Ally Suffrin. Students accepted their certificates and offered remarks about the backgrounds of their award-winning pieces. The Silver Pen Award, which goes each year to the high school whose entries amass the highest number of points, was presented for the first time to Vernon Hills High School.

Marianne Wolf receives

Communicator of Achievement Award

from IWPA President Suzanne Haney.

Heinrichs presented the Mate E. Palmer Awards. This year’s Silver Feather Award honoree was Mary Wagner, who accrued the most points for her winning entries. They included a first place in the “Op/Ed” Category; first, second, third and honorable mention awards in the “Web Photo”

Category; and first, second and third place awards in the

“Writing for the Web” Category.

This year’s Communicator of Achievement Award went to Second Vice President for Membership Marianne Wolf. She will compete with other state honorees for the national Communicator of Achievement Award at the National Federation of Press Women’s annual conference in Idaho Falls in September. In accepting, Wolf focused on the support she has received from IWPA members and her respect for the talent and energy of many in the IWPA leadership with whom she has worked most closely.

Program Chair Lana Brown introduced the luncheon speaker, Mawicke, whose career has included stints as a Green Bay, Wis. sportscaster and Packers post-game show host as well as an internship with the dean of Chicago sports broadcasters, Mark Giangreco, at ABC Channel 7. Indeed, Giangreco remains a friend and mentor to Mawicke, who said she still calls on him for advice.

The former Big Ten tennis champion was introduced to sports and competition early in childhood and said it laid the foundation of her work ethic and her appreciation of athletes both professional and amateur. It was Mawicke’s mother who lived by the credo of “The Three Ds”—desire, determination and dedication. Young Megan, aged 7, took them to heart when she took up competitive tennis and learned they apply to other non-athletic pursuits equally well.

After completing her bachelor’s degree at Indiana University and master’s at Northwestern, both in journalism, Mawicke decided to pursue sportscasting, doggedly printing and mailing 250 resumes to stations around the country. The effort ultimately resulted in a job at a television station in the Green Bay market. It was not glamorous. Or warm. Mawicke found herself trudging around the very rural region lugging her own 35 pound camera, often in the snow and ice. The small market experience included not just getting and conducting the interviews, but writing, producing, shooting and editing footage herself. It’s an introduction to broadcasting she recommends for its limitless learning opportunities.

Aside from covering football in Packer-obsessed Green Bay, she also got well-acquainted with the “outdoor arts”—deer hunting, fishing and camping. On one notable occasion, the fledgling sportscaster was sent to cover the opening day of deer hunting season. She drove to a local hunting preserve and could find no one to interview until she asked at a gas station where everybody was. Just go on down the road to the tavern, was the advice. When she did, she discovered “about 150 pickup trucks with a buck strapped to the hood of each one parked by the roadhouse. Upon entering, she found “200 men in orange camouflage” swapping stories and anxious to tell them to the young woman from the TV station.

“That’s when I really fell in love with storytelling,” she told the audience. “That is the part of sports journalism that I love: not the scores or the description of the game, but the people and the human drama of it.

“I’ve interviewed a woman with half her brain removed and undergoing chemo, who nonetheless ran the Chicago marathon. I’ve interviewed another marathoner who had run 10 races though he is a quadriplegic. I’ve interviewed Special Olympians, amateur athletes who are missing limbs, athletes who’ve overcome bad childhoods, addictions and all kinds of struggles. That is what I find so fulfilling in covering this beat.”

Her “pinch me” moment, she said, was the Cubs’ clubhouse celebration after winning the national League Central Division pennant in 2007. “It was an unbelievable moment.

There were no family members, no outsiders of any kind, just the team and those of us who had covered them all year long. I’ll remember it forever.”

As a woman, she said, she has had to prove herself not so much to the athletes, but to the other reporters. “Every day, there’s someone who will doubt you. You win them over by being consistent and doing the job. I will not be unprepared,” she said.

Mawicke recalls that when she started, there were no female on-air sports reporters in any major market. It’s still rare to see women, she said. There are a number of print female sports columnists and beat reporters but you don’t see them on TV. Sports broadcasting is still a male-dominated world.

Her daily job includes doing four stories a day, often on totally unrelated topics. The most difficult part, she said, is the time limitation imposed by the medium. “Thirty seconds is all we get to tell the story of a game or a person,” she said.

Her final advice to young people interested in the field is to have passion and start at that bottom.

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