SAN ANTONIO – Stephen Cupitt first got involved in live production when he was just seven years old. That experience prepared the then-UTSA freshman to be part of the Roadrunners’ inaugural ESPN+ broadcast production team when it went live from the program’s brand-new, state-of-the-art $5 million control rooms last spring.
“I actually started as a seven-year-old doing lighting design at a church in Houston,” Cupitt said. “When I came to UTSA, I really wanted to be part of something that was technically related and involved live productions.
“As a lighting designer, there are many things that you can do that involve very long projects and you’re working on something for six months,” he continued. “With a broadcast, you come in and there’s a game. You’re there before to set up and you tear down after, and then you’re done. That works a lot better with a student’s schedule than going on a tour or something like that.”
Last season was UTSA’s first as a member of the American Athletic Conference. For the first time, the Roadrunners would be expected to produce many of the program’s home sporting events on ESPN+ at a minimum standard that met requirements established by both The American and ESPN.
At the start of the 2023-24 academic year, the control rooms within the Roadrunner Athletics Center of Excellence were still being completed. It was a multi-year project led by Darren D’Attilio, Assistant Vice President for Revenue Generation and Special Projects, and Andrew Goodenough, a Project Manager at UTSA. The control rooms were outfitted by Digital Resources, Inc., of Southlake, Texas. While the project was being completed, UTSA Athletics contracted Jeff Watts Productions to produce the school’s broadcasts.
In the spring of 2024, Katie Meyers, Assistant Athletics Director for Creative Services who oversees the broadcast department for UTSA Athletics, was responsible for bringing the in-house control rooms online, hiring freelance contractors to perform many of the technical functions and getting UTSA Athletics on the air from within the confines of its own building. The Roadrunners’ softball doubleheader against North Texas on March 15, 2024 marked the inaugural live event produced from the RACE control rooms.
Shortly after that milestone, Cupitt, who had been looking for a way to get involved, reached out to Meyers and immediately became UTSA Athletics’ first ESPN+ broadcasting student assistant.
“The rest is history,” said Cupitt, who is now a sophomore pursuing his BBA in Information Systems from UTSA’s Carlos Alvarez College of Business.
Cupitt works directly with UTSA Athletics’ Director of Sports Productions Elliott Greisen and Production Assistant Aaron Magill on an almost daily basis in helping the Roadrunners produce nearly 100 broadcasts per year for the ESPN+ platform. While Cupitt had developed an impressive skill set over his 11 years of experience prior to coming to college, he continues to see himself grow daily while working with UTSA Athletics broadcasting.
“A lot of the things I had experience with already because I had been involved with churches,” Cupitt said. “Even though I knew some of the things because of what I had done already, everything is a little bit different. You kind of have to start from the beginning but everyone is here to help you. You just have to jump in and want to learn and then you can start learning.”
Cupitt has been involved “in just about every way imaginable,” since joining the department, from mixing audio to operating cameras at games to shading the coloring on the camera outputs.
A proactive approach to seeking opportunities and bringing a willingness to learn, Cupitt says, are the important attributes that will help students be successful in their roles.
“The most important thing for a student to have is just a mentality of wanting to grow,” he said. “It’s the mentality of wanting to do something and having a vision for yourself so that you’re not just going with the flow, you’re actively wanting to grow.”
Cupitt has found that his experience working with UTSA Athletics broadcasts has not only benefited him from a career preparation standpoint, but in all aspects of his life.
“The process of being able to troubleshoot on the fly has helped me in classes and other parts of life,” Cupitt said. “There’s no way to say, ‘no, I can’t do it.’ There’s a way to say ‘Well, here’s how I can do it.’ So, it’s a completely different realm of thinking.”
For Cupitt, he always puts the viewer of the broadcast first. If he can make someone in their living room feel as if they are at the game, then he has accomplished his goal.
“The most fulfilling part for is that everything you do is for someone else,” he said. “So if you’re broadcasting a basketball game, even though I’m just here running audio, someone at home is now being able to hear the ball go in the net or hear the crowd as they’re chanting for the team. It is not necessarily about how I want to perceive the game, but I am trying to do it for the people who are watching the game.”
Less than a year after Cupitt became the program’s first student assistant, UTSA Athletics broadcasts are now almost entirely student-run, with a group of 14 students staffing events throughout the year. They are among the more than 100 student employees, volunteers and work-study students working in departments all throughout UTSA Athletics.
“Students are everything to UTSA Athletics broadcasting,” Cupitt said. “There is no show without having students involved in some capacity. It’s really important to have students wanting to come in here and wanting to grow. It’s not only good for us, but it’s a give and take relationship for these students, as well, who are getting to be part of it and really being able to expand their career fields.”
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Students interested in becoming involved with UTSA Athletics’ broadcast productions should contact Elliott Greisen, Director of Sports Production, by email at Elliott.Greisen@utsa.edu.