So we’ve mentioned this a few times, but this is the actual for-serious call-for-help.
The Markham Thunder are going in to the 2018-19 season as the defending Clarkson Cup champions and they deserve better coverage than we were able to give them last year. We did our best, but I went to Toronto Furies games and Annie lives very far from Toronto and there’s only so much you can do based on limited streaming, twitter feeds, and game sheets. We need someone at games.
Things you need to be able to do
Get to the majority (at least 10) of Markham’s home games, and watch at least a few of whatever away games are available via streaming.
Write up a short (500-1000 words) recap of each game within a few hours of it ending.
Related
CWHL Recap: Furies sweep the Inferno 5-2
Furies Recap: Goodbye, losing streak!
CWHL Recap: Thunder roll over Furies 5-2
That’s it. It doesn’t sound like a lot, and if you are so inclined there are ways to do a lot more with CWHL media accreditation than this but we haven’t got a budget for the position at the moment so it’s largely volunteer with whatever honorarium I can scrounge up. (Also Annie and I both bake, if that helps. We can bribe you with baked goods.)
If you’re an undergrad in a media/journalism/sports media program and are looking for hours to fulfill an internship requirement, absolutely get in touch, but we can’t guarantee this will meet that need.
Things you need to bring to the position
Basically, if you want an excuse to go out to a hockey game on a regular basis, to have some fun, create some awesome memories, practice your writing skills, and help build the profile of women’s hockey just a little bit more — we want to hear from you!
A very basic understanding of hockey. Enough to have a general idea of what’s going on.
Interest in or interest in learning about women’s hockey. If you’re already a Markham fan, that’s a bonus but I started less than halfway through my first season of watching CWHL hockey so we are fine with learning on the job.
Some writing ability — Annie and I are available to do spelling and grammar checks, answer any questions you have and fact-check, but we won’t have time or energy to do full rewrites at midnight on a Saturday.
Other things you can do with this job
This is a league full of elite women’s hockey players, some of them with multiple Olympic and/or World Championship medals. Various members of PPP have talked to Hayley Wickenheiser, Julie Chu, Natalie Spooner, Marie-Philip Poulin, Kelli Stack, Fran Rider and of course the commissioner, Brenda Andress. (If you write for PPP you might get the chance to talk to Hockey Hall of Famer Jayna Hefford. Just saying.) The Thunder not only have players who are champions from all levels of hockey, but also women who have played in leagues all over the world.
If you want to branch out from recaps and do interviews with these women, you can absolutely do that. If you want to request access to talk tactics with the coaches, you can do that too. Part of why we don’t put it in as things we need you to do is because this is a blog, not a newspaper, we don’t need you to do that. The other part is that the more you do, the guiltier we feel about the fact that we can’t pay you to be awesome for us.
Applying
If this sounds like the sort of thing you’d like to do, you can message me (@nafio) or Annie (@Baseball_Annie_) with a link (Google Drive or Dropbox, etc) to a cover letter and writing sample(s). If you don’t have twitter, or you’re not comfortable with twitter, you can also email us at ppp.cwhl@gmail.com.
The cover letter doesn’t have to be particularly formal, just introduce yourself, tell us why you’re interested and approximately where in the GTA you live. The writing sample doesn’t have to have been previously published and it doesn’t have to be sports related, although it helps.
We’d like to have someone by the time pre-season games start, which should be sometime in September. (Pre-season game attendance is optional but it’s a good time to practice and do some scouting.)
If you’ve been around PPP before hopefully this goes without saying but we welcome and encourage women (including, it shouldn’t need to be said, trans women), nonbinary, genderqueer, writers of colour, LBGTQIA2S writers, and disabled writers to apply. (Markham’s home rink, Thornhill Community Centre is wheelchair accessible.)
