Regan McCrossan, '23

Pulling hard on the steering wheel, Regan McCrossan, ’23, slammed the accelerator and squinted at the track flying by. She broke into a broad smile after checking her time at the finish line. She had just “raced” while sitting in a simulator—the same type NASCAR drivers use to practice—in the Charlotte, N.C., studio of FOX Sports, where she worked as a production intern this summer.

Growing up in a suburb of Charlotte, home to the NASCAR racetrack and museum, McCrossan recalled the excitement of race days when fans poured into the region. Although she doesn’t consider herself a car-racing aficionado, the Spider Field Hockey forward is a self-described sports enthusiast.

“My internship brought something new every day,” she said. “I pulled and edited NASCAR video clips in Adobe Premier Pro and helped produce three short features. Two aired on TV—one was about driver Chandler Smith and another was about truck racing.”

McCrossan soon learned to appreciate the time that goes into video production. To create a 15-second montage, she would spend 45 minutes or more exporting and reviewing multiple videos to find the best shots, cutting the clips, and adding music.

Sometimes her work took her out of the office, such as when she accompanied the FOX Sports film crew to an interview with stock-car-racing driver Chris Buescher. On another occasion, she watched a live broadcast of a race from Charlotte’s NASCAR Tower. There she met Jamie Little, whom she described as an “awesome female NASCAR broadcaster.”

Not long thereafter, McCrossan got to try broadcasting herself during a practice shoot.

“I wrote and memorized a script and then delivered it while standing by the Charlotte Motor Speedway,” she said. “The FOX cameraman filmed my 45-second story.”

Her Jepson internship with FOX Sports drew upon her majors in leadership studies and rhetoric and communication studies and her experience as an NCAA Division 1 athlete, she said.

“I can apply ethics theories I’ve learned in my Leadership Ethics class to how the media creates and relays news,” she said. “In my rhetoric and communication classes, we studied how people interact through traditional and social media. As a senior on the field hockey team, I am conscious of leading through example—showing up on time and trying my hardest at practice, building healthy relationships with my teammates.

“Communications is essential to effective leadership. I hope to use the communications skills I’ve learned at the University of Richmond and in this internship to work in a sports-related field after graduation.”