College soccer is a big part of my workload, and I will be on the road on each of the next six weekends calling games, with a few other games thrown in. That schedule includes SEC women's soccer, Big XII women's soccer, Big Ten men's soccer, and, most notably, the ACC championship game in both women's and men's soccer. October and November are going to be busy! This stretch of games starts on Sunday, Oct 8, when I've got No. 19 Texas A&M facing Georgia in SEC women's soccer action.
The preparation for it, however, goes back to mid-August. Since the SEC Network launched in 2014, I've been part of ESPN's team covering the conference, so I track how each team is doing, what formation they're using, and who's playing in what spot(s). So I watch a lot of games each week, mostly replays via WatchESPN. Sometimes I will sit and watch the games and take notes, particularly if I know I will be calling one of the teams. Other times, I will watch long enough to understand the starting lineups, then skip around looking for the goals.
But adding in both ACC tournaments this year, along with the ACC's agreement to stream its games on WatchESPN, has really given me a chance to focus on the nation's best soccer conference. So that's more than 40 teams I'm tracking every week of the college season, and it should really pay off when I need to research a team and can quickly access their lineups, results, and key moments in their season. Being able to put a team's season in context and understanding at least a little bit of their journey is really critical to a good telecast, and I'm looking forward to learning more about each of the teams I'll call over the next six weeks.
So that's part of what us announcers do when we're not actively calling a game or typing up notes for the next one. Preparation, both on a big-picture level and for specific teams, really never stops.
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