Caleb Gill started watching football when he was 10 years old. “Not just watching football but following it almost religiously,” he recalls. “I would stay up to date with all the free agent signings, coaching changes and draft prospects, and I fell in love with doing that.”
As Gill got older, he decided he wanted “to at least try to make a career out of it and see where it goes.” Where it’s going first is Madison, SD. Gill is the new sports director/play-by-play broadcaster at KJAM Radio. He’ll also host a daily air shift.
Head start
KJAM is an opportunity for Gill to look forward to after he graduates from the University of Toledo this month. “I have been in the job market looking for something for when I graduate for a while,” Gill states.
He admits he wasn’t expecting much when he submitted his application. “I thought maybe at most I could get some interview experience. But as we went through the process I realized this could end up being something legit for me.”
Now, Gill is moving to South Dakota to start his career a little bit higher up the ladder than he initially thought he might.
“Instead of getting out of college and taking a part-time job as a board operator somewhere, I feel that I am taking a bigger leap and instead get the ability to work a full time job as a sports director,” he enthuses. “This experience can only benefit me and potentially put me on track to get to where I want to go faster than anticipated. Not even being 22 years old yet and having the ability to say I am the sports director of a radio station was too good for me to pass up.”
Finding STAA
Gill is a mass communications major at Toledo. His experience includes play-by-play and production of sports programming for radio and TV. It was also at Toledo that he learned about STAA.
“I found out about STAA from [fellow STAA member] Garrett Jones, who does radio for Houston Baptist University. HBU came to Toledo to play the women’s basketball team in the WNIT. Garrett traveled with them to call the game. There he introduced himself to me and we got to talking a little bit before we exchanged information. I then reached out to him for some advice and he told me about STAA.
“So far my membership has helped me get advice about the industry. I have reached out to a LOT of people because of the membership and have learned a great deal from the people I have talked to. Also reading the different comments and posts [in the private STAA Member Community] from other people in this industry has helped me to get, not just a sense of what it is like, but also again more advice.”
Gill himself has wisdom to share, especially about the sportscasting job market. “Staying positive and hopeful helped me personally during my pursuit of a job,” he recalls. “I applied to a couple jobs a week, and sometimes multiple jobs in a day. I feel being persistent in my search lead me to this point. But also me taking advantage of everything that I could while in college helped me to land a job like this. I did radio and TV, and did some live sports productions too. I tried to do everything I could while at Toledo and that has certainly helped me.”
Now the young man who started following football religiously at age 10 will be covering sports for a living.