I had the honor of interviewing the broadcaster and baseball operations manager for the Kannapolis Cannon Ballers, Trevor Wilt. Trevor has now worked for the Cannon Ballers for about four years now and he absolutely loves his job and being able to watch baseball in the process. Down below are some of his responses to the questions I asked him about his career and what his job consists of on a day-to-day basis.
Trevor started his career by attending UNC Charlotte, which is located in Charlotte, North Carolina, majoring in Communications with a minor in Journalism. He stated, “I had no clue what I wanted to do growing up or even when I got to college so I started to open my eyes to fun opportunities around campus and that’s when sports jumped into my life.” This is when he started to get involved on campus and finding sport communication opportunities and that led him to talking about baseball during a 5-minute segment on a 2-hour sports radio show. Throughout his time in college, Trevor worked his way up to play-by-play announcing for UNC Charlotte. He announced baseball, basketball, softball, volleyball, and soccer games for two years as the main guy and even started his own radio show on campus. Once he graduated, he started applying for jobs that sports teams had available and that’s when he landed the Kannapolis Intimidators (now the Cannon Ballers) job.
When I asked him what his favorite thing about his job was, he replied, “I get to watch a sport, talk about it, and get paid. It’s pretty freaking awesome if you think about it like that. Instead of doing that on my couch with Doritos and a cold beverage in my hand, I get to do it in packed venues with a microphone in my hand and stats in the other. It’s a lot of fun and I never take that for granted.” It is not always easy, however, because he says the job comes with multiple hats that you have to wear and managing time can always be a challenge. He likes to carry around a notepad in his back pocket so that he can manage his time better and knock out everything that he needs to do throughout the day.
The communication aspects that he uses the most daily is coordinating with players/coaches and media members. He says that sometimes this can be difficult because you have to find the best times for both parties involved and how to get in touch with said people. He does this with emails, phone calls, and text messages depending on the circumstances and the COVID pandemic has had an impact on that. He told me, “You have to make sure players/coaches have good quality phones/laptops or I look like the dummy when the interview does not turn out well.” These aspects of communication make him have to be on his phone constantly and he said it can be overwhelming because you might start to venture off and do other things.
He believes that he uses all the aspects of communication during the day but he says he uses phone calls the least. It helps him manage his day better when he can send a text message or email over to someone when he has multiple meetings so he can continue to communicate with them when those are going on. He told me that he goes from printing off stats in the morning by himself to talking in front of two to five thousand people before each game. “It’s a crazy day of trying to use different forms of communication skills to impact different people,” he stated while talking about his daily schedule.
You can tell Trevor loves his job and he has fun while doing it. He worked his way up from a 5-minute segment on a 2-hour sports radio show, to broadcaster of a Minor League Baseball team which is pretty amazing. He has always brought passion to the game when I have attended Cannon Ballers games and does a great job at doing what he does.
Something a little bit different today as I am going to rank my top 10 favorite Minor League Baseball logos down below, Enjoy!
1. Fayetteville Woodpeckers
7. Hartford Yard Goats
8. Frisco RoughRiders
9. El Paso Chihuahuas
10. Everett AquaSox
