COLORADO

TURNING GAME NIGHTS INTO CONTENT FANS COULD CARRY BEYOND THE ARENA

AHL • Colorado Eagles • 2020 - 2022

I joined Iowa Speedway in March 2024.

Three months later, the NASCAR Cup Series would race there for the first time.

The track itself wasn't new. Iowa Speedway had years of racing history, an established fanbase and a place within the state's sports culture. But the Cup Series represented something different. When NASCAR announced in later 2023 that its premier series was finally coming to Iowa, the scale of what the track was preparing for changed almost overnight.

I arrived in the middle of it.

There wasn't much time to ease in. My job was to help take a race people had been waiting years to see and build the marketing around it.

LEARNING SPORTS WITHOUT THE CROWD

I joined the Eagles' Media & Public Relations team in 2020, when professional sports were still operating under the realities of the pandemic.

There was no normal game day. Then again, I would eventually learn there really isn't one in sports.

During that first season, much of my work happened behind the scenes. I helped coordinate Zoom interviews with players and coaches, supported media availability and learned the rhythms of a professional hockey communications department.

I was one of three interns, I wasn't there to own the operation. I was there to learn how it worked.

And I paid attention.

I watched how communications professionals interacted with players. How media relationships were managed. How quickly plans could change on a game day. How many people were working behind the scenes to tell the story of what was happening on the ice.

Most importantly, I learned how to be around professional athletes.

Not as characters in a story, as people.

CHANGING SIDES TO LEARN MORE

When I returned for a second season, I made a deliberate decision to move from Media & Public Relations to Digital & Social Media.

I wanted to see another side of the organization.

Really, I wanted to learn everything I could.

My second season put a camera in my hands much more often. I photographed games, helped capture media day, and produced content around the team throughout the season. One of my photographs was eventually shared by the AHL account.

It was a small moment.

I remember how much it meant to me anyway.

My time in Colorado also gave me the opportunity to work two NCAA Division I Men's Ice Hockey Regionals, adding another version of hockey to everything I was learning on the team side.

Every experience showed me something different about how a story gets told.

A media interview could tell it one way. A photograph could tell it another. A social post could capture something neither of them could.

And sometimes the best thing I could do was simply notice the moment happening in front of me.

THE PEOPLE INSIDE THE UNIFORMS

Working around athletes changed the way I thought about athlete storytelling.

At 18, professional athletes can feel impossibly far away. Then you work beside them.

You watch them have good days and terrible ones. You see the routines, pressure, personalities, and ordinary moments that don't make broadcasts or highlight reels.

You realize very quickly that the uniform doesn't make someone less human.

That lesson has stayed with me everywhere I've worked since.

The relationships I built with media, coaches, and players at Colorado were grounded in something remarkably simple: mutual respect.

Do your job.

Respect theirs.

Remember there's a person on the other side of the camera.

WHEN THE BUILDING CAME BACK

By my second season, the arena felt different.

Fans were back.

So was the noise.

The Eagles made a playoff run in 2022, and players who had spent time in Loveland would go on to be part of the Colorado Avalanche team that won the Stanley Cup that summer.

After beginning my time with the Eagles in an arena without its crowd, I got to experience what happened when all of those pieces came back together.

That's what I remember most about Colorado.

Not one post, not one game, not one photograph.

I remember how much I loved being in the middle of it.

WHAT COLORADO GAVE ME

I came to the Eagles because I wanted experience working in professional sports.

I left knowing I wanted to stay on the team side of it.

Across two seasons, I helped coordinate more than 40 press conferences and player interviews, contributed to real-time game coverage and created content for social channels reaching more than 100,000 fans and generating nearly one million impressions during the season.

By the most valuable thing I took from Colorado is harder to quantify.

It taught me to pay attention.

To the people behind the players.

To what happens away from the puck.

To the moments fans don't always get to see.

And to the responsibility that comes with being one of the people trusted to bring them closer.

I was 18 when I walked into the Colorado Eagles feeling like a very small fish in a very large pond.

Two seasons later, the pond wasn't any smaller, I had just learned how much I wanted to be in it.

JILLIAN MURPHY