UNC journalism grads share career-shaping experience of covering Olympics while in college
Posted August 28, 2021 12:43 p.m. EDT
For 2017 UNC Chapel Hill journalism graduates Jenny Chiu and Sean Cavanaugh, the opportunity to travel to Rio de Janeiro to cover the 2016 games during the summer between their junior and senior year of college still remains pivotal to their careers to this day.
At just 20 years old, they had life-changing and career-changing experiences – like interviewing Kyrie Irving, witnessing the Brazil men’s football team win gold for the first time, traveling to the Olympic village and reporting on countless world class athletes in a month-long tireless campaign.
“It was the best way to jump in the deep end of the pool,” Chiu said. “Either you sink or you swim, and I swam and now I work in the business.”
Going into college, both students possessed a love for sports. Dubbing himself as the “fringe sports guy,” Cavanaugh was always the kid in grade school to know anything and everything about athletics.
“When we used to go to Super Bowl parties as a kid, everyone would go outside to play manhunt,” Cavanaugh said. “They’d say ‘Come outside,’ and I’d say ‘The Super Bowl is on, I'm watching the whole game! What is the point of this?’”
His acute sports interest came into play at UNC-CH, where he managed the women’s lacrosse and volleyball teams, wrote for InsideCarolina and joined the journalism school’s sports broadcast, Sports Xtra.
Chiu played on the North Carolina women’s soccer team and her extensive knowledge of her sport influenced her to get involved in Sports Xtra with Cavanaugh.
The professor teaching Sports Xtra, Dr. Charlie Tuggle, was also in charge of a study abroad course that gave a select group of students the opportunity to travel and cover the Olympics. Through his existing connection with these students, Tuggle offered both an interview to be considered for the class.
“I thought ‘There's no way I'm getting this,’” Chiu said. “‘But we'll try anyway.’ Really a shot in the dark.”
To Chiu’s astonishment, she made the cut, and decided to miss her senior year pre-season to pursue this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Cavanaugh also landed a position in the class, and concluded that his dual citizenship in Brazil made him the perfect candidate for the trip.
Fast-forward to summer of 2016, the class touched down in Rio two weeks before the opening ceremony to begin media training for the games. When they found their living accomodations in the media village, many of the students were disappointed to find that their rooms looked roughly like a construction zone.
Cavanaugh simply laughed at the circumstances.
“In classic Brazilian style, they just didn't finish the construction in time,” Cavanaugh said. “We walked into our rooms and there were nets over the windows and in the screens and door handles on the floor. So I'm laughing like fully expecting this, whatever. And half the group's like, ‘Where are we staying? This is terrible!’”
After the two weeks of prep, the class moved to Copacabana beach and began the whirlwind of reporting facing them. The students’ main task was to work in the “mix zone,” the place in athletic venues where athletes arrive after their events, to get quotes and transcribe them for the Olympic News Service.
The reporting days were a learning curve for the young journalists, as they consisted of long hours and learning how to adapt to collaborating with journalists and athletes around the world.
“I worked with journalists from Swaziland, Canada, Barbados, the Netherlands, England, Scotland, Australia, New Zealand—and those are just the people who spoke English,” Cavanaugh said. “And I’m talking to all these athletes from every country of the world, from a 15 year old Ukrainian kid up until like a 40-something Danish dude.”
If this wasn’t enough newness, some students even covered sports of which they had no prior knowledge of. In Chiu’s case, she reported on soccer and... badminton.
“I didn't know anything about that sport until they said ‘This is what you're doing,’” Chiu said. “I was like, okay, Google, what the heck.”
Chiu admitted that covering sports on the fly in Rio helped her later in her professional career, as she quickly adapted to covering Champions League when she was a specialist in Major League Soccer before.
She described her favorite memory of the games as the men’s football final, when Brazil played Germany for the gold. The teams were tied 1-1, and when both did not capitalize on extra time, the game went to penalty kicks. After Germany’s fifth kick was blocked, Neymar converted Brazil’s last penalty kick and secured the country’s first gold in football.
Chiu vividly remembers the sea of yellow in Maracanã stadium and wildly cheering for one of the biggest victories in her sport with the journalists she met in Rio.
“When I describe it to people, that moment is like a movie,” Chiu said. “I've watched Messi against Ronaldo, but that moment for a home country to win the Olympic gold in soccer, it's the craziest thing.”
She experienced that moment with soccer journalist Grant Wahl, who she has been close with ever since.
“We reminisced recently,” Chiu said “He texted me and said ‘Can you believe it's been five years?’”
Networking with some of the best journalists in the industry was one of the biggest perks of the trip for the students. Cavanaugh is still close to some of his contacts made there, and many other UNC students, including Sports Anchor Louis Fernandez Jr. and NBA Broadcast Coordinator Lindsey Sparrow, have made successful careers in the industry today through their strong networks.
Now, Chiu works in Miami on camera with CBS Sports and Cavanaugh hosts for Bleav Podcast Network. With his career coming full-circle, Cavanaugh also got the opportunity to cover the 2020 Tokyo games.
Through taking this class, the young journalists not only got to cover the largest and most complex sporting event in the world, but were exposed to countless different sports and cultures and built their networks through them. The students then took these experiences and applied them to navigating the professional world, and have ultimately made their mark on the journalism field.
“It was monumental,” Chiu said. “You can't read about it. You can't take a class about it. When you're immersed in it, that's the most soaking-up sponge situation ever. And that's the beauty of journalism.”
Kaitlyn Schmidt is a rising junior in the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media.
