Paralympics Archives - Grady College

Countdown to the Olympic Games: Vicki Michaelis

Posted on July 23, 2021July 23, 2021 by Dayne Young

The Olympics in Tokyo will be the first Summer Games Vicki Michaelis has not covered in nearly three decades. Between Summer and Winter Games, Michaelis has reported from nine Olympics.

The press badges Michaelis has collected over the years. (Photo: submitted)

Her Olympics coverage for the Denver Post, USA TODAY and TeamUSA.org has taken her to Sydney, London and Athens, Greece, among other global hubs.

She witnessed every Olympic victory from Michael Phelps, including his historic performance in 2008 in Beijing when the swimmer won eight gold medals. Michaelis wrote about documenting that history for TeamUSA.org in 2016.

“The Olympics are a potent mix of everything I love about covering sports,” Michaelis said. “You have an endlessly rich array of athletes and their narratives to explore. You also have the social, political and cultural layers of the athletes and teams competing against each other.”

Michaelis is now rooted in Athens, Georgia, where she is the John Huland Carmical Chair in Sports Journalism & Society and director of the Carmical Sports Media Institute.

Her first visit to UGA’s campus was for the 1996 Olympic Games when soccer was played in Sanford Stadium. Little did she know then that her career would one day be planted steps away from that same stadium.

After Michael Phelps won his eighth gold medal in Beijing in the medley relay, Michaelis captured this image. Phelps and his medley relay teammates are visible in the background on the top step of the podium. (Photo: Christine Brennan)

“It is very special to me now,” Michaelis said. “But, to be honest, my memory of covering that game isn’t vivid or anywhere near complete. More than anything, I remember being deeply grateful for the cold hot dog that UGA sports information legend Claude Felton (ABJ ’70, MA ’71) offered after the game, as I filed my story from the Sanford Stadium press box.”

That small gesture of kindness was received with much gratitude considering Olympics coverage deadlines make sleep scarce and good meals rare. The multi-week grind was always worthwhile for Michaelis because it was a small price to have a first-hand account of athletic history.

In Atlanta in 1996, she covered the U.S. women’s gold-medal games in soccer, basketball and softball.

“I saw and chronicled those watershed moments in U.S. women’s sports,” Michaelis said. “Both soccer and softball were new to the Olympics, and it was the first time Americans — a generation after the 1972 passage of Title IX — really embraced women’s teams and not just individual women’s athletes at an Olympics. The Atlanta Games changed how we view professional women’s sports leagues and women in sports overall. That I was there for those historic Olympic victories is a career highlight.”

Michaelis was part of the ecosystem of professionals around the Olympics. Many of her best memories and connections were created in the shadow of the iconic five-ring logo. Now, she and the Carmical Sports Media Institute create similar opportunities for young journalists.

Students in the Carmical Sports Media Institute began covering the Paralympic Games in 2016 in Rio de Janeiro and will continue in perpetuity thanks to the generosity of the Carmical Foundation. This coverage is in partnership with The Associated Press.

Professor Vicki Michaelis talks with Miranda Daniel, left, Nikki Weldon and Zoe Smith as they plan out coverage at the US Air Force Academy of the Department of Defense Warrior Games in Colorado Springs, Colorado, on Thursday, May 31, 2018. (Photo: Mark E. Johnson)

“The Paralympic Games offer all that I love about the Olympics, amplified,” said Michaelis. “Media outlets, though, generally don’t devote resources to amplifying the Paralympic stories. That gives us the opening to give our students the social, cultural and practical experience of covering a Paralympic Games while also giving them the chance to get their stories and photos published by high-profile media outlets.”

With every Olympic Games competition comes new stories from athletes and their home nations. It is where local cultures meld with sporting achievement serving as a common and universal language. For a sports storyteller, the Olympic Games are bountiful garden of meaningful narratives.

“You have the heightened drama and emotion of the competition, because every moment and every result is so consequential when the chance to shine comes only once every four years,” said Michaelis.

The Olympic Games in Toyko will be different for Michaelis. She will enjoy the spectacle as a spectator and through the eyes of the audience she’s long served. It will surely stir up a variety of emotions and memories.

Just as many athletes find themselves coaching the next generation of gold medalists, she now serves as a coach. Some Olympics content she consumes in July and August will be created by students she trained.

“As fulfilling as it was to be an Olympics reporter,” Michaelis said, “the reward of seeing our Sports Media Certificate graduates live their dreams is beyond compare.”

Countdown to the Olympic Games: Emily Giambalvo

Posted on July 7, 2021September 14, 2021 by admin

Emily Giambalvo graduated from the University of Georgia in 2018. Now just a few years later, she is in Tokyo covering the Olympics for The Washington Post.

While this is the first time Emily is covering the Olympics post-graduation, this actually marks the third olympic game she has worked at. While at UGA, Emily pursued a Sports Media Certificate through Grady College. This opportunity combined with her work for the student-run newspaper The Red & Black helped introduce her to the world of sports writing and reporting.

“I think that Grady sports program was what kind of opened my eyes to the fact that this could be a career,” she said. “Before that I don’t think I even really knew what a sports writer was, like I didn’t grow up reading sports journalism.”

An athlete herself, Emily was a gymnast for 15 years. It was a sport she loved competing in and a sport she loved watching, which has helped launch her into her current role as a reporter covering University of Maryland athletics for The Post. In Tokyo, she will be primarily covering the sport she’s grown up practicing.

“It’s just kind of like this dream to even be going to the Olympics and then also to be covering the Olympics,” she said.

Right now Emily says she is doing absolutely everything she can to prepare for the Olympic Games.

“It’s my first time doing this with The Washington Post and I don’t really know if this is the best way to do it but I’m just trying to be really proactive so I can have deeply reported stories in Tokyo,” she said.

This prep work includes brainstorming potential stories, researching all the American athletes and familiarizing herself with past contestants. While this is her first time covering the Games with The Post, Emily has a unique experience that she can look to — she has covered two Olympic-related games in the past for Grady.

Emily sits writing a story at the Olympics in Pyeongchang. (Photo: submitted)

In 2016, she covered the Paralympics Games with Grady College in Rio de Janeiro for the Associated Press. The following year, she covered the 2018 Winter Olympics with Grady in Pyeongchang, South Korea through TeamUSA.org. Over the course of three weeks, she helped produce more than 20 stories covering the mountain and snow sports from ice skating to snowboarding to hockey and more.

All of these roles eventually helped her land an internship with The Washington Post after graduation, which turned into a full time offer.

Emily particularly points to her experience with the Paralympics as something that makes her stand out to employers. “It was the thing that everyone asked about and almost started that snowball effect of just getting more and more opportunities so I’m a big, big advocate of what Grady does with sending students to the Olympics,” Emily said. “I think it’s just this really great way to get people unique experience that not a lot of other college students have.”

Because she’s covered the Olympics before as a student, Emily says she has a better idea of what she will be walking into. In fact, she said she finds herself wanting to prepare for the Tokyo games in the same way that her professor instructed her to for the 2018 games. That being said, the experience is different since a few years back when she was preparing as a student journalist.

Emily poses for a photo at the Olympics in Rio. (Photo: submitted)

“There’s just I guess a little more pressure to do a good job and to write stories that are Washington Post-quality stories,” she said. “And, you know, that’s kind of true with all aspects of my job, but I think The Post has historically done such a great job covering the Olympics so it’s really cool to be part of that, but you just kind of hope you can contribute to that good coverage,” she said.

Grady College students ‘dug deep’ to tell inspiring stories from 2016 Paralympics

Posted on October 27, 2016December 7, 2016 by admin

To overcome physical challenges and rise to compete at the highest level of parathletics—the Paralympic Games—takes an awe-inspiring amount of training and dedication. To report respectfully and responsibly on the amazing feats of those athletes takes a special kind of journalist. That was the task for nine Grady College students who covered the 2016 Games in Rio in September.

Through a partnership with the Associated Press, David Barnes, Jenn Finch, Josh Jones and Casey Sykes (from visual journalism) and Jamie Han, Emily Giambalvo, Emily Greenwood, Kendra Hansey and Kennington Smith (from Grady’s Sports Media Certificate program) worked in teams to produce multimedia content from the first half of the Games that was distributed globally.

“They just completely knocked it out of the park,” said Mark Johnson, head of the college’s visual journalism program. Johnson and Vicki Michaelis, director of Grady Sports, supervised and edited the students’ work in Rio. “I know we brag about our kids a lot because we have spectacular students,” he continued, “but the way those nine worked the situation, the way they dug deep to find great stories, poured their hearts and souls into it for all the time they were on the ground in Rio, was just unbelievable.”

Super pics by @_joshljones @caseysykesphoto & @jfinch36 @Paralympics via @AP: https://t.co/ZHSVA9cM6V #GradyinRio pic.twitter.com/fhOCztcoYz

— UGA Grady College (@UGAGrady) September 9, 2016

In advance of the trip, the students researched the athletes and events, and talked through possible story ideas to pursue.

“When you go to a Paralympics, everyone has an amazing and dramatic story,” Michaelis said. “So you have to apply a whole new standard to ‘what stories are we going to tell.’

“I always ask my students, ‘why now and why should I care?’’” she explained. “The ‘why now’ is really obvious—they’re competing at the Paralympics. But the ‘why should I care’ became the question that needed to be answered before we’d continue with the story.”

Unlike at the Olympics—where it can be hard to get a unique story because there are hundreds of other reporters going after that same story—journalists at the Paralympics were granted more access to athletes and coaches, according to Michaelis, a veteran Olympics reporter and the John Huland Carmical Chair in Sports Journalism & Society.

“Our students could really operate as full working journalists,” she said. “They didn’t have to rely on hanging on the fringes of press conferences and group interviews to get what they needed. They were able to interact one-on-one with the athletes and coaches and set up meetings outside of the venues.”

“It forced me to ask some of the hardest questions I’ve ever asked as a reporter, all while being in the new environment of an international sporting event.”

— Emily Giambalvo

One example was Kendra Hansey’s preview story about U.S. Army veteran Melissa Stockwell, a paratriathlete from Team USA who was competing on Sept. 11.

“Stockwell served in Iraq, she lost her leg to a roadside bomb,” said Michaelis. “When Kendra sat down with her, Stockwell talked about what an honor it was to be able to go out and represent her country on 9/11.”

Stockwell won a bronze medal that day. But the silver and gold medals also went to Americans, an incredible moment covered in an article by Emily Greenwood and captured in photos by photojournalism student Jenn Finch.

“Those pictures of the three women on the podium are pretty powerful to see,” said Johnson, “particularly being on the fifteenth anniversary of the September 11^th terrorist attacks.”

Another story shared by publications around the country was Emily Giambalvo’s piece about a table tennis player who was homeless as a teen.

“It quickly turned into a larger story than I expected when [the athlete] opened up about struggles during his childhood,” Giambalvo reflected. “It forced me to ask some of the hardest questions I’ve ever asked as a reporter, all while being in the new environment of an international sporting event.”

Added Michaelis: “That’s the kind of story that rises above…table tennis being this person’s refuge and guiding light through his early life.”

While in Rio, the students relied on skills they learned in Grady College courses, as well as on-the-spot advice from Michaelis and Johnson.

“The Paralympics is complex in terms of classifications of competition, because the athletes’ impairments are so varied,” said Greenwood. “It was a challenge to understand, and accurately report on, the different classifications in each event. Professor Michaelis has always stressed the importance of accuracy and doing your research, though, so I relied on checking and double-checking my work before submission to make sure I was accurate. Having Professor Michaelis as an editor is tremendously helpful, as well.”

Kennington Smith, who wrote about how sighted guides coordinate with athletes, among other stories, also leaned on Michaelis’ guidance.

“Professor Michaelis helped me so much throughout the process. There was one time in particular where I had about four or five story ideas that I had worked on that all fell through within an hour,” Smith recalled. “I was very frustrated but she worked with me and I ended up with a great story to tell at the end of that day. Overall, she taught me that in journalism, I must be patient and the right story will always come.”’

“The Visual Journalism program has instilled a sense of responsibility when covering any event or undertaking any job,” said David Barnes. “As journalists, it’s our duty to be objective reporters and, of course, that applies to the Paralympics. When we went to cover assigned events, I often reflected on class lessons to help deal with all the noise and focus on what was in front of me so I wouldn’t be overwhelmed.”

Jonnie Peacock of Great Britain, upper right, runs in the men’s 100M T44 preliminaries at the 2016 Paralympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on Thursday, Sept. 8, 2016. Running a time of 10.81 seconds, Peacock set a new Paralympic record. (David A. Barnes/University of Georgia via AP)

According to Johnson, the students handled themselves like true professionals.

“I think it’s critically important that (the Paralympics) get covered in a professional manner, in a respectful manner,” Johnson said. “These are athletes who spend their entire lives striving to get to this place in the same way that Olympic or professional athletes do. That was the big message that we tried to get to the students. They looked at (them) not as disabled athletes, but as professional athletes. That, to me, says a lot about our kids.”

As a public relations major, Greenwood produced branded content for sponsor Coca-Cola, in addition to writing for the AP. (Coca-Cola funded a portion of the students’ travel expenses, and ThinkTank Photo donated and Canon USA loaned equipment for the visual journalism students.) Regardless of the career path she chooses, Greenwood, who plans to apply for law school, believes the experience will help her stand out.

“Few people can claim to have stories in the Washington Post and New York Times at 21 years old, but Grady Sports has given me that opportunity,” she said.

@Kconnorriley @EmilyGiam I was emotional this morning as we all parted ways at the airport, b/c they gave me so many #proudprof moments.

— Vicki Michaelis (@VickiMichaelis) September 13, 2016

“The fact that UGA and Grady were willing to go the extra mile for us to have this experience further solidifies my love for this school,” added Smith. “This opportunity was everything I could ask for, plus more.”

Photojournalism student Josh Jones also gained a lot from the experience. “This trip helped to advance my career goals by showing me that I can perform at a high level and on extremely tight deadlines in an international setting,” Jones said. “I’m so thrilled with this amazing opportunity Grady provided for me and the once-in-a-lifetime experience I had in Rio.”

As remarkable as the experience was for the students, it was equally, if not more, special for Michaelis.

“It very well may have been the most validating experience of my life…how often does a teacher get to see her students apply what they learned in a real-world setting and have it be that high quality?” she asked. “I feel very fortunate that I was able to have that.”