Earlier this semester, Rowan University announced that its partnership with the NBA G League team, the Delaware Blue Coats, would be expanding. One of the main parts of this expansion is that The Whit will be adding a section to its website to cover all Blue Coats events for the 2021-2022 season.
With this addition, The Whit will cover a professional team in a way the paper has never seen before. Someone who had a direct impact in making this partnership possible is the Director of Rowan’s Center for Sports Communications and Social Impact, Neil Hartman.
“From my perspective, it’s a great opportunity for our students to experience what it is like to be a game-day reporter– a beat reporter covering a professional team,” Hartman said. “[The Whit] covers teams here on campus, but it’s a whole new ballgame when you get to go out and experience it with professional athletes in a professional environment.”
Through this partnership, The Whit will have three Blue Coats interns assigned to covering the team throughout the season. Junior Matt Green is now the Blue Coats beat writer. I, the Blue Coats section editor, will be writing and producing all the content on the team for the newspaper. Junior Joey Nicolo is the Blue Coats photographer and he will take all the pictures to go along with our content.
Blue Coats President Larry Meli is excited to get this program up and running.
“I love it,” Meli said. ”For us, one of the biggest challenges, especially in minor league sports, is awareness, and the opportunity to partner with a media outlet like The Whit gives us that exposure in an area that we’re not [in], you know. People may not know who we are.”
Along with interns working from The Whit, the Blue Coats have given 18 other students internship opportunities. These roles vary from broadcasters, who will broadcast all home games on Rowan Radio, to game-day operations.
While preparation for this season has already been in effect for all the students involved, the actual start of the Blue Coats season will take place on Saturday, Nov. 6, when they face the Long Island Nets at home.
“[We’re] really excited to be back in this market for the first time in 20 months,” Meli said. “We’re going to have a great year. It’s going to be a lot of fun and we’re happy to have Rowan with us along the ride.”
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