19 November 2024

#ECC2024 Sports Media Trainee Blogs

Callum Penman (24) from Scotland and Ladjánszki Máté (28) from Hungary are the latest winners of the Sports Media Trainee Programme. In March, they were selected to join the World Curling Media Team at the Le Gruyère AOP European Curling Championships 2024 in Lohja, Finland.

Ladjánszki Máté – Trainee Photographer

Final Reflections

Every adventure comes to an end, and the experiences lived along the journey slowly transform into cherished memories. It feels great to look back and realise that I arrived knowing almost nothing about curling and left with a full understanding of the game, watching it with genuine enjoyment. Bastian Wyss helped a lot in this. During the competition he worked as a commentator, but when neither of us were on duty, I eagerly listened to his predictions, which always proved accurate.

Not to mention, having access to the practice sheet several times significantly contributed to me developing a liking for this sport. A huge success for me was when I managed to keep two of my stones inside the house. I even started to think about applying to the Hungarian team so that next year, I might return not as a photographer but as a player!

Another fond memory is when, between the women’s and men’s finals, Bardocz-Bencsik Mariann from the media team, World Curling Photo Manager Stephen Fisher and I went for a dip in a nearby icy lake. A new experience checked off the list — I had never done anything like it before. Stephen was already more experienced in cold water plunges, he managed to stay in the few-degrees-cold water for over a minute. My toes, nearly frozen from walking barefoot in the snow, finally thawed in the sauna. Icicles hung from the wooden cottage covered in snowy moss and the sauna window looked out over the lake, where, after us, the Czech men’s curling team also tried the cold-water plunge. After the sauna, we took one more dip in the lake, thinking it might feel better this time — but it was just as terribly cold.

The week concluded with a banquet held in a large gymnasium after the award ceremony. The athletes dressed elegantly and shared dinner together. After a few speeches, the DJ took over, the music started and the dance floor belonged to the athletes. I loved seeing the members of teams who had competed against each other just hours earlier now dancing together, everyone so approachable and relaxed. This warm, familial atmosphere characterised the entire championship — curling is such a small sport that here, everyone knows everyone.

Looking back, I find it quite special that, as a photographer, I ate lunch and dinner in the same place as the athletes, some of whom are Olympians. In other sports, this would be almost unimaginable.

It was an amazing ten days with an incredible media team — everyone was super nice and helpful. I learned so much about curling and teamwork, and I’m sure this marks the beginning of a beautiful friendship between me and curling.

Midway Check In

Time flies quickly here. Whenever I travel away from home, I lose track of time and it was only today that I realized that half of my time here has already passed.

From a photographer’s perspective, these past few days have been incredibly useful and much needed, as the teams battle for a spot in the semi-finals. I’ve now become familiar with the arena; I know when and where I can go on the field and I’m starting to get a sense of the athletes’ habits. Actually, my favorite task from World Curling photo manager Stephen Fisher has been observing and capturing the iconic habits of the athletes. For example, Swedish Niklas Edin practically lies flat on the ice during his delivering and then slides forward in a Spider-Man-like pose. Italian Sebastiano Arman sticks his tongue out when concentrating and the Danish girls celebrate their victories with great joy and laugh a lot even during matches.

The basic request from World Curling media team is to photograph the first two ends of a draw, then select the best 10–20 photos, edit them and tag them with keywords. Stephen introduced a system for this that I wasn’t familiar with before and it significantly speeds up the process, so I’ll definitely use it in the future. Afterward, we upload the images to a photo sharing platform accessible to the media team members. Then we return for the end of the draw to capture the celebrations and handshakes. Since matches are played on five sheets simultaneously, we always divide them amongst ourselves.

Once, I didn’t submit photos during the draw but stayed on the field the entire time to shoot. So when the match ended and photos were needed, even though I had great shots, they were all on my memory card. Plus, sorting through so many images afterward was a nightmare. Lesson learned.

My favorite game with photographer James Roberts during selection is called “Bad or Art?” This question comes up when we’re sorting through long-exposure shots, as many of them end up overly blurry or artistic to the point that it’s hard to tell what’s happening in the photo.

The biggest challenge for me is creating clean compositions because there are so many distractions in the background. With multiple matches happening at once, players often walk into my frame, and finding new angles can be tough since we spend days in the same arena, where even the lighting doesn’t change. Speaking of the arena, it feels like being in a refrigerator all day — wearing coats, three pairs of socks and multiple layers is a must. Plus, I almost always sit on the ground while shooting: first, because action shots look better from a low angle, and second, to avoid getting in the way of the camera operators. That’s why it always feels so good to spend half an hour under a hot shower at the hotel after a long day.

I also had the chance to not just photograph curling but try it myself on the practice sheet. If you ask how it went, I’d say I didn’t kiss the ice and the stone slid. So I did relatively well. I knew sweeping on the ice wouldn’t be easy, but the balance needed for delivering is incredible.

On Wednesday, I finally got to experience what a real Finnish winter is like. The first snow fell! Now, it’s not just the ice in the arena we can sweep but the snow outside too!

Day one

The time spent on Instagram often feels unproductive. Yet, if I hadn’t been scrolling through Instagram stories on a January evening, I’d never have learned about the World Curling Sports Media Trainee Program. I don’t remember exactly who shared the announcement, but I do remember that the deadline was just a few hours away. So I quickly selected my favorite sports photos and submitted my application. 

In March, I found out that I had been chosen as a photography trainee for the European Championships starting on November 16 in Finland. Time flew by quickly and more than six months later, I realized it was time to start packing for the Finnish adventure. 

The flight was easy and smooth, with a direct route from Budapest to Helsinki. When I heard birdsong instead of pop music in the airport restroom, I had a feeling I’d soon get to know the real nature of Finland. A taxi picked me up from the airport and drove for about an hour toward my accommodation. Due to the early winter darkness, I couldn’t see much, but I could tell we were driving through a picturesque landscape of pine forests. There was a stretch of road illuminated by torches that gave off a pleasant scent. Later, I found out that they were used purely for decorative purposes. In daylight, I saw that some houses were the classic red timber cabins, surrounded by beautiful Nordic pines. The hotel, located near Siuntio, was on a large plot of land, far from any neighbors. The highlight of my room was a wooden railing equipped with a small guide for morning and evening stretching exercises. 

The next morning, after a 25-minute drive, I arrived at the Kisakallio Curling Arena with World Curling photo manager Stephen Fisher and photographer James Roberts. I helped set up the photo studio in a small room we had designated for the purpose. The first day was media day, meaning Stephen and James photographed every athlete and team. Meanwhile, I took photos of the teams practicing, finally getting a closer look at this sport.

I had never watched curling before — it’s not a popular sport in Hungary — so before the trip, I watched some videos on YouTube to get to know it better. Later, Mariann Bardocz-Bencsik from the media team explained the rules to me in detail and I loved how we could analyze the game live at the venue, understanding why certain things happened. Initially, I thought curling might be a relatively boring sport, but with this insight, I realized it was incredibly exciting. Known as “chess on ice,” curling took on a whole new meaning for me, revealing it to be not only technical but also deeply strategic.

At the venue, I found out there was a Hungarian team as well. I got to meet the ladies, which made the entire week even more thrilling, as I now have someone to root for!

Callum Penman – Trainee Content Creator

Final Reflections

Now that I’m back home I’ve had time to reflect on my experience. To say that it was amazing would be an understatement, the skills that I’ve been able to learn, the people I’ve met and the sport that I have a huge newfound appreciation for. Literally as I’m writing this, I have the Canadian Grand Slam on in the background.

During my time I mainly shadowed two people, Content Creator Amy Gibson and Senior Writer Mike Haggerty. The work I did with Amy was focused on the social media side of things and from the start of the week we were brainstorming different trends we could recreate with the teams. Not only was it great fun getting to interact with all the different athletes, but it also helped me develop skills such as editing and videography. It also helped my confidence in asking different people to take part in our videos, which is something I have struggled with in the past. As I want to pursue a career in social media marketing, these ten days have been great experience that I will take forward into my next role.

A slightly unexpected experience that I got while I was out in Finland was working with Mike and writing the daily match reports. Although unexpected I found it incredibly valuable. This involved me writing up a brief description of what happened on each game on all the sheets, including detailing the score throughout the game, different type of shots as well as what the games meant in the grand scheme of the championship. This gave me the opportunity to learn and write in a new style that I haven’t experienced before, and I found it incredibly valuable. If I have the opportunity, I would love to get into social media marketing for a sports team and this experience will help me, just another benefit of making the trip to Finland.

I was also got to try photography at the event. Photography is something I haven’t ever really had experience in but being able to have that opportunity it is extremely beneficial because in my everyday life I would never have been able to experience that.

Overall, despite the cold, being given the opportunity to come out to Finland has been beneficial more than I could imagine, it has given me countless opportunities to develop new and existing skills which I will take into my future career, but not only that, it has been so much fun. Getting to work with all these amazing people has been fun and I have thoroughly enjoyed my time there and couldn’t be more grateful.

Midway check in

I feel that I have been settling into the team very well, I am very comfortable to go up to anyone in the team if I need help or if I have any questions about a task or curling in general. This has most likely come from both the time we are spending together working as well as when we aren’t. Being quite a small team it is nice because it feels manageable to get to know everyone on a personal basis, compared to other jobs that I’ve had where the team is that large you can’t get to know everyone. Getting to know everyone better as the week has progressed has just made the experience better and better, we’re able to have a good laugh while working which makes doing our job that bit more enjoyable. 

I can’t fault anyone on the team, they have all been very friendly and welcoming which has made the experience just that much better. 

nitially one of the things that has surprised me the most is realising how interesting curling is! Now this may seem harsh but before coming out to Finland for this event, I had little to no knowledge of the sport whatsoever, which is slightly blasphemous because I lived only 15 minutes away from Scotland’s national curling centre in Perth.  

What I have found/learned about is that the sport is so tactical that requires so much strategy that goes into each and every throw. Learning things such as the different throws a player can make, all the different calls to let the team know the incoming type of throw, and finding out that the brushes actually have a purpose!  

All of this from the initial few days of games has given me a huge appreciation for the sport and I am finding myself becoming more and more engrossed in the games, watching each and every one with actual interest, and although we have to remain completely unbiased when working, I am always secretly cheering on Scotland! 

One of the best moments since I got here has been learning about the sport of curling. Again, I basically knew nothing coming into this and for a sports orientated person like myself (play field hockey, watch football, F1 etc) it has been amazing to be completely absorbed in curling. You can teach yourself a sport quite easily but being invested, day in day out has given me such an appreciation for the sport that I otherwise wouldn’t have gotten involved with. 

Organising interviews and writing the match reports has been great as well! I have really enjoyed learning a completely new way of writing and putting that into practice. Also conducting the interviews has pushed me outside of my comfort zone and provided me with even more skills. 

But some best moments haven’t been what I expected, there have been a few occasions where we have gotten all that we need from the event and head back to the hotel to edit videos, write reports etc. We are sitting in the hotel lounge, all just getting on with our own bits of work chatting away and it has been a very good environment. 

Also, the snow has been an amazing added bonus! (see photo) 

Day one

A little bit of background about myself, my name is Callum Penman and I am a social media and digital marketer. Always having a passion for creativity, I pursued a degree in International Marketing which gave me amazing holistic knowledge of marketing as a whole. I very much enjoyed the degree because as well as learning the ins and outs of the industry I was also able to express my creativity in multiple different projects and assignments such as creating the marketing strategy for our own hypothetical vegan restaurant. 

Once I graduated in the summer of 2023, I started the search for positions as a marketing assistant, in the meantime, I offered to manage the social media and website of a local driving school to gain vital practical experience. At the beginning of 2024 I was hired by Children’s Hospices Across Scotland (CHAS) on a temporary contract as a Sponsorship and Marketing Assistant for an event that they were organising. This role gave me a wealth of knowledge and experience in so many different ways, I managed and created content for all of our social media platforms, I managed and updated the website as well as help organise the event as a whole and much more. As a result of the event, we were able to raise roughly £500,000 for the charity which was the cherry on top of the cake for such an amazing time that I spent at CHAS. 

Now I am very grateful to have been selected as a media trainee for the European Curling Championships. A friend of mine suggested that I apply for the position as they knew that I was looking to break into sports media and later that day I sent my application away. I heard back from the team quickly and the next thing I knew I had the interview. The interview process was very streamlined, they asked me details on my previous experience and what I enjoyed most about working in social media. Sometime later I heard back and was very glad to have received the position. 

The whole travel process was extremely easy, they initially asked which airport would be easier for me to fly from and gave me a selection of flight times to work with which may seem like a small detail but it was very much appreciated. The team at World Curling made sure that I had all the necessary information before travelling with details of the flight, hotel and everything in between, and if I had any questions, they were more than happy to help. Next thing I knew I was on the plane and on route to Finland, after having found a slightly peculiar part of the bathroom in Amsterdam airport that I have never seen before anywhere!

My initial impressions have been great, the team have been incredibly welcoming and friendly as well and making sure to answer any questions that I may have had. They have taken the time to explain my role to me in detail, expectations, as well as very detailed information about the sport as a whole because before starting I had very little knowledge of curling. I am very much enjoying what I’ve been asked to do, learning all these new skills centred around media has been amazing and I have already tried my hand at curling, we managed to throw a few stones on the practice sheet and I was given a rude awakening finding out how difficult it is! I can’t wait for the next week of curling! 

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