By LEILA SCHOEPKE | Guest Writer
“Play Ball Like a Girl” is a metaphor that has been notorious for carrying a provocative nuance. To some APSU sports broadcasting students and faculty, the expression was a motivation to produce a video that puts a spin on the typical phrase and celebrates the university’s pride in its women’s basketball team’s achievements and creates excitement amongst Lady Govs fans.
APSU graduate assistant Maria Young said, “The phrase, in itself, is not derogatory, but society has given it this negative connotation. Because of that, the phrase ‘You play ball like a girl’ suggests that playing like a girl means being weak, playing uncompetitively or not possessing any skills or talent. And this simply isn’t true. We wanted a way to take the negative connotation that had been given to this phrase and turn it into a positive one, so that ‘playing ball like a girl’ is something people would aspire to do.”
Colin Bell, another APSU student who contributed to the video, said, “Because of the Lady Govs’ success in the OVC during 2008-2009, playing ball like a girl can be seen as a good thing.”
Young said when she approached coach Carrie Daniels and the team about the concept for the video they were “psyched.” She said no one had ever explored the idea and having the Lady Govs team be the face of the concept made the project all the more unique.
“This what it means to ‘play ball like a girl’; to be strong and athletic; to be champions,” Young said.
The video was the product of brainstorming sessions between sports broadcasting instructor Caroline Sawyer and Young. The sessions have inspired several video projects and generated the idea of a video featuring the Lady Govs’ basketball team ‘playing ball like a girl.’
Young then wrote the script and directed it while Bell operated the camera during some of the shoots and edited the video. Brad Averitt and Kevin Fee also operated cameras, Young said.
“We wanted to show game footage of the Lady Govs being strong, fast, aggressive — characteristics that some believe only male athletes possess. Throughout these clips, we wanted the women to own these characteristics by stating ‘I run like a girl,’ ‘I shoot like a girl,’ ‘I pass like a girl.’ Professor Sawyer had a great idea for the final shot of the video.
“In order to drive home our message of empowerment, we had the team stand around their OVC championship trophy while the senior, Nicole Jamen, proudly questioned the viewers, ‘Don’t you wish you played ball like a girl?’” Young said.
The video was submitted along with a number of other videos that APSU students produced and felt best reflected their work.
From those, “I Play Ball Like a Girl” was selected as a finalist to participate in the 2010 College Sports Media Awards competition (CSMA), which recognizes exceptional college sports video productions throughout the nation.
“Being nominated is an accomplishment I never saw coming. I enjoyed watching how excited and pumped up the Lady Govs got when watching the video on the video board before running out and winning 9 out of 10 home games once the video made its premiere,” Bell said.
The College Sports Video Summit was held Tuesday, June 8, in Atlanta where a panel of industry professionals considered all submissions during April and May and announced the winners within each of the various categories, Bell said.
The video was one of five nominees among a larger pool of contestants in three categories representing the most outstanding college sports-video productions. Appalachian State University football team, University of Dayton men’s basketball, Seton Hall University men’s basketball (nominated twice) and APSU women’s basketball were all competing to win the award in the category “Outstanding
Promotional Video or Campaign: Collegiate 2.”
“This video was competing against productions from professional companies representing the other universities. One of the winners in the collegiate level used a professional actor from LA to work in the video. So it was just a wonderful honor to be competing with videos that had these huge budgets and were created by crews of professionals. Here we are, this production group composed of nothing but students and yet, they chose our video to be nominated,” Young said.
The winner of the 2010 CSMA’s Outstanding Promotional Video or Campaign award in the category Collegiate 2 was the University of Dayton men’s basketball Pre-Season Top 25.
Young said even though APSU did not win the award this year, the event offered opportunities for the sports broadcasting students to attend seminars as well as meet, interact and exchange ideas with other professionals in the sports media industry.
“We felt that although our video did not feature some the jaw drop effects that the others did, our chances of winning were strong. Our video carried this innovative and powerful message and featured a women’s sports team instead of a men’s sports team,” Young said.
Young said APSU’s sports broadcasting students are continuously producing new video content.
She said in the same year that the students premiered the “I Play Ball Like a Girl” piece, they also created other projects such as the “Go Dave Loos on ‘em” rap video about coach Dave Loos, the “I Play for the Peay” men’s basketball promotional video as well as other Gov themed videos.
“The APSU Department of Communication will continue to participate in the CSMA by submitting new entries. Our students are already talking about videos for the upcoming year that they would like to submit to the competition,” she said.
The video can be found at www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmZk3Juij0k.
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