An Unforgettable Experience Working the Olympics for NBC

Thanks to an incredible experience taking Live Sports Video Production with NBC Sports’s Amy Rosenfeld, SVP of Olympics and Paralympics Production, I had the incredible opportunity this semester to spend three weeks in Stamford, CT, working on the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics.

Needless to say, working for NBC Sports was my version of winning Olympic gold. I grew up watching the Games surrounded by my family. I saw Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone win gold on my birthday in 2024, and I watched Michael Phelps take his victory lap on my birthday in 2016. For two and a half weeks, the world comes together, and nothing else seems to matter but watching incredible athleticism unfold right in front of our eyes.

So, for these Games, I worked 12 hours a day, six days a week with a team of producers, APs, PAs, and fellow loggers – strangers, when I started work on Jan. 31. But through teamwork and a shared love for the greatest event in sports, we managed to get a show – the Olympic Zone – on air across the country, Monday through Saturday.

Here’s an inside look on how I helped make that happen.

Training & NBC amenities

In the lead up to my move to Stamford, I got word that I’d be working on the Sportsdesk as a production logger, transcribing, logging, and pulling footage for the production team working on Ozone. Ozone was a 360 look at the Games – the culture, the traditions, the athletes, and the beautiful backdrop they competed against. For me, that ranged from working on segments about my favorite hockey players (https://www.nbcolympics.com/videos/us-womens-hockey-veterans-hope-guide-rookies-gold) to the longstanding tradition of pin trading in the Olympic village (https://www.nbcolympics.com/videos/pin-trading-tradition-captivating-olympic-villages).

My first few days were all about training on the Sportsdesk systems, like Avid iNEWS and Interplay, and NBC’s music system. But it was also about getting to know the sprawling campus and taking advantage of all its amenities – shoutout to the 24/7 free food and crew gifts from Ralph Lauren! I also got to know my team, which included a PA from the same intern class as me at ESPN and a SHU alum, Sarah Gregory. My team and I immediately bonded over our shared passion for the work we were doing and our long – but rewarding – work days.

The day-to-day

Producers and APs were assigned to certain segments for every show. Their vision is what guided the process from filming to editing – and I was thrilled to help that come to life. Because of my lifelong Olympics obsession, I was familiar with the athletes and the storylines going into these Games. I had spent MONTHS researching, so by the time we all toasted to the start of the Games with NBC Sports president Rick Cordella, I felt like I could really contribute.

Of course, most of my job was transcribing and logging. But as we got further and further into the three weeks, I got to help with show organization and the scripts. This was essentially helping to choose the “must run” segments for our NBC affiliates and ordering all the different parts of the shows, like bumps, ads, and the segments. I got to load those into iNEWS and sometimes sit with the AP, Alexa, to come up with quippy/punny transitions. My journalism and reporting experience came in clutch for assignments like these.

The in-between

But NBC Sports made sure that the 70+ hour weeks weren’t all spent working. We had to complete challenges to receive our medals, and every day they hid rubber ducks with the Milan Cortina logo that you could find to receive a prize. And prizes weren’t hard to come by – some days they’d give out hats, pins, whatever you could think of. All of us received posters by the end of our placements, which a lot of people chose to have their co-workers sign to commemorate their short time together.

And, of course, we came together for the best moments of the Olympics. There were obviously TVs everywhere, and we took advantage. When the women’s hockey team won gold, there were at least 10 of us – not even all Sportsdesk employees – crowded around one tiny TV that was ahead of the others. We were yelling, jumping up and down – just feeling all of the emotions. It was the same way for Ilia Malinin’s unfortunate free skate; instead, we were holding in our tears instead of cheering. But there was nothing like the atmosphere in our office when we were witnessing history – history that we were helping to write in real time.

What I’ll take with me

Though I was working with a team of people I didn’t know, I could rest assured knowing I had fellow SHU students interning with me and people like Amy and my awesome HR rep, Allie, around for support. And that team soon became close colleagues, who cared about my professional development and my personal wellbeing. Their encouragement carried me through the three weeks.

And now, I have production experience, something I really didn’t have before, in probably the fastest-pace job on the planet. As I prepare to graduate in May and continue my pursuit of work in the sports media field, I’ll have this experience to reference always.