Coach Schmo
This Is Uncomfortable
Marketplace
4.6 • 3.6K Ratings
🗓️ 27 October 2022
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
When Joe Hanson got the call to start a varsity esports team at the local community college, he didn’t know what to think. He already had a full time job. He had a family to think about. And this coaching gig, it was basically a glorified volunteer position. Plus, he didn’t even know what “esports” really meant. But this opportunity stirred something within Joe that he couldn’t ignore… In this episode, we follow Coach Joe and his ragtag team of gamers as they go up against the best and try to prove the haters wrong.
This episode was reported Reema Khrais, produced by Serena Chow, edited by Karen Duffin and engineered by Drew Jostad.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Jo Hanson had been working in IT at a community college in Madison, Wisconsin for 13 years |
| 0:09.5 | when he got the phone call. |
| 0:11.1 | The unexpected call that sent him down an unexpected path at a time when everything |
| 0:15.6 | was uncertain. |
| 0:17.4 | It was the summer of 2020. |
| 0:19.0 | Jo was working from home, like a lot of the world at that point, when a coworker from |
| 0:23.2 | the college called him up, the sky Jason, from the athletic department. |
| 0:28.3 | They knew each other, but Jo still thought, hmm, that's weird. |
| 0:32.2 | I work in IT. |
| 0:33.8 | Why does the assistant athletic director need to talk to me? |
| 0:37.1 | We spent the first few minutes catching up, you know, seeing how we're adjusting to the |
| 0:42.0 | new normal as everyone loved to call it back then. |
| 0:45.0 | And then suddenly Jason asked a question that I was not expecting. |
| 0:52.2 | The guy said, so as you can imagine, we've had to shut down most of our athletic teams |
| 0:56.4 | right now, COVID and all, which is obviously not great, but also it's free to stop to think |
| 1:01.5 | about something that's been brewing in our heads for a few years now. |
| 1:05.4 | Like a lot of us during those early COVID days, the folks at the athletic department had a |
| 1:09.0 | lot of free time on their hands. |
| 1:11.0 | But instead of baking sourdough bread or learning Swahili on Duolingo, they were thinking |
| 1:16.1 | a little bit bigger. |
| 1:17.6 | Jason asked if I would be interested in helping start an esport team at Madison College. |
| 1:25.4 | And by start an esport team, he meant essentially from scratch. |
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