Stadium Scene’s Main Event

With the Tokyo Summer Olympics coming up, we thought it would be appropriate to bring on someone to talk about competitive swimming.  There is always an uptick in interest in competitive swimming after the Olympics.  

Our guest today is Erik Richardson, Assistant Coach for Men's and Women's Swimming at Olivet College in Olivet, Michigan.  Erik was a swimmer for the University of Evansville and has coached at club, high school, and now at the college level.  

About 8 minutes into the episode, Kate finds out that D.J. and Erik pulled a prank on her and that they've been friends since 4th grade.  Erik and D.J. grew up in the same neighborhood in central Indiana.  After some technical difficulties with Kate's Zoom connection, we talk about Erik briefly participating in the Winter Olympic sport of Skeleton and what that is exactly.  

Finally, we close out part 1 talking about various events, practicing, and the differences between coaching club kids, high school, college, and the challenges of recruiting swimmers at a DIII college.  

Check back for Part Two next week where we talk about Olympic Swimming, Michael Phelps, Ryan Lochte, Katie Ledecky, and how the popularity of participating in competitive swimming always seems to increase in an Olympic year.

If you want to see the video and photo slide show, you should absolutely subscribe and check out our YouTube channel.

Today's episode is brought to you by Linq.  Bring your business card into the 21st century at Linqapp.com.  Use promo code stadiumscene and save 15% off your order!

So apparently now Zoom tells you in an AM radio quality audio that your meeting is recorded.  Definitely caught us off guard at the start today and it was too good to edit out, so that's the opening today.

We're super excited to sit down with Ashleigh Binder of Sports As Told By a Girl.  Ashleigh partnered with us in our early days of the site and has published over 300 articles to our site since joining us in 2018!  She starts off the episode by telling us the origin story of how the blog was originally part of a "build a website" class in college that just kept on going.  

Ashleigh also enjoys meeting and working with others who provide different perspectives in sports and how she's had tens of women join and write for the site, including some who have spun off and started their own blogs as a result!  We also have a discussion about her experiences with trolling for being a woman who discusses sports and provides her advice for how to deal with it.  Plus, how do WNBA posts do from a traffic standpoint?

Finally, stick around to hear her advice for a rookie blogger!

Be sure to check out Ashleigh's work:

As usual, this episode was published as a video to our YouTube channel.  Be sure to subscribe and check out exclusive video only content!

We shouldn't record episodes on Friday afternoon because...well watch and see.    

We're super excited to have Emily Williams back on the show two months after her first appearance promoting her book, Lady-Thletes (available at Amazon and maybe your local public library?!).    We've been chatting with Emily since her visit and she has decided that the next step after the book was to start her very own podcast!  On Saturday, May 15th she launched the very first episode of Lady-Thletes: The Show!  

What's also exciting is that we're helping her produce it!  This is our first venture down the path of producing someone else's material and we couldn't be more excited to work with Emily on this project!  Emily talks about the process of building up to the first episode, the necessary preparation and the learning curve of planning episodes, finding guests, and creating seasons to avoid burning out during the project.  Emily will be interviewing people involved with women's sports, coaching, and sharing her thoughts about coaching in the episodes, so be sure to subscribe and check out season 1!  

As mentioned above, be sure to subscribe to Lady-Thletes: The Show and follow Emily on social media! - 

As usual, the video for this episode can be found on our YouTube channel.  Subscribe today and never miss an episode!

Kate is back with us today and we kick off our cold open talking about our interview with Phil Schoen from BeIN Sports (skip to 4:16 unless you want to hear Ray Hudson's greatest call ever in D.J.'s opinion).  Phil has been a staple of the soccer announcing community for three decades and covered everything from low-level soccer to professional level, and even the World Cup for ESPN, Fox, GolTV, and now BeIN Sports.  

We talk to Phil about his beginnings in Miami and his love for the game watching his local Ft Lauderdale Strikers play in the NASL and learning about a player named Ray Hudson, who like most of us know went on to be his long time broadcast partner calling games in Spain (La Liga), France (Ligue 1).  Phil talks about the growth of soccer and how the creation of the MLS helped him reach the national television stage and how while broadcasting with the MLS he met up with Ray Hudson and tried to get him to join the booth.  

We move on and talk about what are the next steps that need to be taken in the USA to take the game to the next level (make MLS more of a global force, USMNT competing deep into World Cups).  D.J. also shares a story of an amusing conversation young DC United Assistant in the mid-90s at a US Open Cup game who has later become quite the head coach himself.  

Phil also talks about the "soccer vs football" debate and has a unique perspective on it and closes up the show talking about how in the last few years has gotten started building up his own voice-over company, VoiceGoals, and the challenges associated with going into business yourself.  

Check out more about Phil: 

If you want to see the video of this interview and Kate's facial expression to Ray Hudson's call, be sure to subscribe to us on YouTube!

We welcome you back from our hiatus with a guest who has also come out of a long hiatus!  Our old friend Dave Knittel has recently announced that his popular YouTube channel, "The Soccer Tavern" is making a return!    

Dave talks about his inspiration for creating videos about the history and culture behind "The Beautiful Game" and how his strategy of "Evergreen content" resulted in him growing by over 1500 subscribers despite not publishing a new video for over one year.  His content features material from England (Premier League), Germany (Bundesliga), National Teams (World Cup, European Cup), and some classic smaller clubs in the United States.  He also talks about dealing with the critique and the comments that used to bother him and the challenges of appealing to club supporter groups who are very passionate about their clubs.  

Be sure to follow The Soccer Tavern.  You'll learn a lot! - 

Also, check out his merch shop for the latest gear!

Hey, we wanted to post a quick video to let everyone know where we've been and that the Main Event show will be on hiatus until early May. 

 Steve, our Graphics Designer (and the designer of our logo), and Kate's long-time partner's father passed away last Sunday after a long battle with cancer.  We felt that it was only appropriate to shut things down for a couple of weeks while they take care of their families during this extremely difficult time.  

If you haven't been on "Ten Minutes With..." and want to plug your sports-themed blog, podcast, YouTube, or Twitch channel on the show, first, you need to join our network for FREE.  Once you're in, please reach out to us via your account manager's email, or message us on one of our social media accounts to schedule:  - 

Today we are joined by Max Costanzo of LawnChair Sports podcast.  Before we begin, D.J. breaks the shocking news that Michael Strahan posted to social media that he went to a cosmetic dentist and filled his trademark "gap" between his front two teeth.  He's been out of the league for over a decade now, why now?  

Max kicks off the episode talking about his time at Florida Gulf Coast University and how he met his partners, first Matthew "Coach" Landers, and then his two other partners Michael Ortega and Carlos Arias.    

Next, he talks about how the theme of their show was put together, followed by Kate turning the discussion onto what kind of lawn chair do you prefer?  Well, what kind do you prefer?  

Max also talks about taking your shot and going after guests you think maybe way out of your league. He talks about reaching out to Jamey Rootes, the now-former Team President of the Houston Texans, and how he booked him as a guest.   

Finally, we talk about getting your name out there and the challenges of getting your content on multiple platforms.  If you're looking to expand the distribution of your podcast, there are some great tips here!  

Check out LawnChair Sports wherever you download your favorite podcast and follow them on social media:

This episode was also released to our YouTube channel.  Be sure to watch and subscribe.  If you subscribe, you'll be entered for a chance to win some great prizes every 100 subscribers we get!

We're back with a new episode this week featuring Emily Corbett of "She Writes Sports", a sports blog from the female perspective. Emily talks about how she originally built the blog as a college assignment and turned it into a full site with a team.  

Moving on, we talk about the challenges of making predictions in sports and how most people get it wrong, and the additional "critiques" of being a woman and posting about sports.  Expanding on that discussion, Emily is very open about the "trolling" she receives and shares her advice for how she deals with it.  

Finally, before we wrap D.J. shares his "Do Not Try This At Home" story about his first experience building a website pre-YouTube that was inspired by a former hit MTV show.  

Be sure to check out She Writes Sports and follow them on social media: 

As usual, the video for this episode is available on our YouTube channel.  Subscribe today and you will be automatically entered to win great prizes every 100 followers!

So we had some schedule conflicts and won't be releasing a new episode for the first time in now a year!  It's really hard to believe how far we've come!  We thought it would be fun to re-release an episode of one of our early podcast episodes featuring Bernard Pollard with some intro commentary from D.J. talking about how far we've come.  Check back and try to enjoy one of our earliest episodes of the show!

Kate and D.J. are joined by nine-year NFL vet, Super Bowl Champion, and D.J.'s former neighbor at Purdue, Bernard Pollard.  After realizing that Bernard lived in the dorm next door at Purdue, we discuss the Super Bowl, Super Bowl Media Day shenanigans, the future of the NFL, why the Patriots have been so successful over the last two decades, and who he thinks is the best QB of all time.  In the second half of the show, we talk about Bernard's favorite teammates and coaches, being starstruck playing alongside Ray Lewis, how to prepare to play against Brady and Belichick.

Give Bernard a follow on social media: