Erin Quinn, Caroline Steadman and Hillary London on making their way to ESPN

Erin Quinn, Caroline Steadman and in particular, Hillary London, are perfect examples of how life can take you places you wouldn’t expect to go.

Quinn and Steadman, recent college graduates, already hold positions with ESPN in one of the fastest growing fields at the worldwide leader in sports; the stats and analysis department.

London, who works in the stats and analysis department, took longer to nab her position at ESPN. She was an 11-year lacrosse coach before a friend referred her to the opening.

“I tell a lot of the people that I got the job because I’m a woman and I speak Spanish,” said London, who added that ESPN was looking to add females in the statistics and information department, which includes bottom line, production research, stats an analyst and the analytics team.

London, Steadman and Quinn spoke to Steve Fox’s Sports Journalism class on Wednesday morning. They primarily answered questions about how they reached ESPN and dished out advice for students applying for jobs or internships.

Quinn graduated from Smith College in 2009 with a major in economics. She worked as the sports editor of the school newspaper her freshman year, and didn’t know what field she wanted to go into, but knew it would be sports oriented.

She built her resume through internships with a minor league baseball team in her sophomore summer and also interned at the Baseball Hall of Fame.

A few months after graduating ESPN hired her as a stats analyst. Quinn described a lengthy interview process ESPN put her through, that included attending an info session, a phone assessment, an e-mail assessment, five or six more phone interviews and then a day on ESPN’s campus for interviews all day.

Steadman, an Amherst College graduate who also holds a degree in economics, went through the same interview process as Quinn did.

One of the most important things Steadman did was spend a summer in Costa Rica working on a literacy project. She eventually became fluent in Spanish.

This helps Steadman in her current position, because she can help translate blogs for ESPN Deportes, the Spanish version of ESPN.

“That was a pretty good selling point for our department,” said Steadman.

London hired Steadman and she reviews other applicants for positions in stats and analysis.

She stressed that the worst thing an applicant can put on their resume is that they are “passionate about sports.”

London argued that every applicant at ESPN has a passion for sports, and instead it’s important to sell yourself and explain why you want the job you’re applying for.

“Make sure that you’re putting across the reason why you want that job, it’s not just about passion,” said London. “If there’s one thing to take away from this, take that.”

For an aspiring journalist like myself, it was reassuring to hear that opportunities for young people like Quinn and Steadman are still available. You always hear how difficult it is to break into the sports field, but knowing that they already hold solid position at the mecca of sports journalism made me more optimistic about my own future.

Derek Boogaard and the state of hockey

Last year, I caught wind of the Derek Boogaard story by the New York Times. I read it, and was instantly astonished at the entire package. The writing, reporting, photography and videography was just fantastic, not to mention how informative the piece was. I feel like I know a lot about sports, even a sport like hockey that I don't follow too closely. But I found myself learning so much about the game of hockey, the state of concussions and even addiction from the NYT piece.

First of all, I thought the chronicling of the fight's was brilliant. It's not that I enjoyed the violence, but I had a better picture of the health issues Boogaard suffered after watching a number of his fights. They didn't have to link the fights in the text, but I took the time to watch the videos because I felt it was applicable to the text.

The reporting and writing was exquisite, and the author clearly did some serious digging into Boogaard's personal life to get the information he did. The three-part video that accompanied the piece provided me with visuals of the people in Boogaard's life, and their recollection of him. Sometimes it's much more powerful to hear someone say something, rather than read someone say something.

I want to take this last section to continue the discussion we had in class regarding how the game needs to change. Like football, obviously, it needs to be changed from the ground up. That means coaches must be teaching our youth to play hockey in the safest way possible.

I also think that the current players and fans mindsets must change. I heard the argument in class that "the game will never change" and the role of an enforcer is necessary because otherwise there would be no policing. First of all, "the game will never change" mindset is close-minded. We're seeing a gradual change in the way the game of football is being player, in that player safety has been brought to light. It's not far-fetched to think that hockey could follow

As for the argument that self-policing by players will never change, I wonder, isn't that the commissioner's job? Shouldn't he be doing the policing? For example, what if he handed out suspensions for fights? Would fighting and enforcers then be necessary to the sport then?

Think of the big three sports. In baseball if you fight you can expect anywhere from a 5-to-10 game suspension, depending on the severity of the fight. In football, a punch thrown correlates to an ejection, a fine and a possible suspension the following week. In basketball, Carmelo Anthony received a lengthy suspension for throwing a punch, and the Malice at the Palace resulted in some of the most serious suspensions in basketball history. There is no self-policing in these three sports. Instead, there's an understanding between the commissioner and the players that fighting is unacceptable, and if players step out of bounds, serious punishment will follow. It's not a coincicidence that fights are incredibly rare in all three sports -- particularly basketball and baseball.

Boogaard's story should have illuminated the problems in hockey, particularly with concussions and the  role of the enforcer. Instead, based on our conversation in class, it just reassured the disastrous, illogical mindset of the sport's fans..