Alumni Spotlights: From Sport Media to Working the PWHL

How did Mic’d Up start?

It started with us in the first year of the PWHL being like, “how can we show people how awesome these girls' personalities are?” We knew that. We knew the players.

We knew that they were amazing, but we're like, “how do we show this to people?” Only so many players have TikTok, like Emma Maltais, that you can tell how awesome they are. So we had an epiphany one day.

We're like, let's just throw a mic on them. Throw a mic on them during warm ups and see how it goes. We started doing that, and we started editing these pieces together, and they were obviously so funny.

These women have such good personalities, and this completely shows that.

We started doing that and going through all the trials of how we can properly and safely mic these girls up. It was kind of difficult in the beginning because we had never done this. So we went through doing a mic strap that was velcro, but it wasn't safe enough. It could fall out.

We worked our way up to where we are now, where it's a league-approved operation where we run through what we're going to do with each equipment manager in the league.

It's a top-down approval, which is amazing.

Their equipment managers are actually sewing in the pouches that we mail to them, so that when we get these chest protectors four hours before the game, we're able to safely put in this specialized microphone that's flexible and safe for them and actually tape it and rig it up so that it's foolproof because we've had every issue you could probably have.

We pretty much go to every CBC-owned game, which is once a week, and we'll travel to wherever it is. A lot of them end up being in Vancouver or Montreal.

So we'll travel out there with the microphone, mic them up, do it, give the shoulder pads back, monitor it throughout the game and then edit it all together and send it out.

During the PWHL season, we're completely PWHL-focused, which is so nice.

Did you have any surprises or challenges starting Mic’d Up?

During the Scotiabank game last year, we actually had a mic pack fall out of Erin Ambrose's pouch during warm-ups.

So that was a big like, uh-oh, we gotta figure this thing out.

Most of the surprises come from people that we didn't think were gonna be as entertaining as they are. It works out; everyone has pretty much turned out to be better than expected, which is really fun.

What’s been one of your favourite moments?

The Emma Maltais mic'd up, we did. Her getting the penalty and screaming, that clip went so viral, and everybody loved that.

Seeing moments like that where people, other TikTok editors are grabbing that and putting that on these fan edits, everyone hears that clip now. So that's like a really funny one. 

What does a shift look like for you?

If I'm watching it at home, I’ll be making some notes, what stood out, what players stood out. Were there any specific events that happened during the game? 

I actually live really close to the Coca-Cola Coliseum. I'll walk over there for like five minutes before the end of the third period.

I'll meet with the camera person, and then we'll wait for the game to be over.

You can always tell who's the super fan and who's more like the casual viewer. We definitely want to get a little bit of both.

You have to be OK with rejection, you have to be OK with some people being like, “no, I don't want to talk to you.” 

What I love so much about the Sceptres is there are so many young girls who either play on a hockey team, or it's their first Toronto Sceptres game. I think that's super, super inspiring.

Seeing all the young girls come out and want to talk to me and the parents. Our super fans who know their stuff, and want to do that banter, which is also great. 

I get quite a few different kinds of people.

What does it mean to you to be a part of Fan First and to cover the PWHL?

It means so much, especially with Fan First, we're such a tight-knit group of people.

I just really love sports and building a community of shared interests.

It means a lot that people are interested and want to watch. When I’ve gone to Sceptres games with friends, they're like, “wow, I didn't know the energy in the arena.”

The energy in the arena is absolutely electric. There's no way to describe it.

It's been great so far, and I really enjoy doing it.

How have you changed from your first season covering the Toronto Sceptres to your second?

This isn't live content, so anything can always be edited, which I always tell myself. I feel like I've grown so much and I’ve become more confident in my abilities.

Aso just being in the production room (as an RTA student) and getting to have that on-camera practice has helped as well. I know that's not for everybody, but it's really good if you ever want to do public speaking or job interviews.

I think getting on-air practice is really critical because it helps you build self-confidence.

How was it going from Sport Media to PWHL?

In classes, the tech classes, I love to be assistant directing or floor manager. I liked being able to make those decisions and working well under that pressure in a time constraint.

It really translated to game activation and presentation in the arena because I can go, “I have three TV timeouts this period. This is what we need to do… Have we picked fans for this activation? These people need to sign waivers.”

It's a lot of keeping track of multiple things all at once and staying on a timeline and working as a team to help.

What have been some moments that you’re proud of?

One of my favourite things is always the people we end up choosing for activations.

There's sponsored activations where it's a season ticket member of the game. Those are people who come to every game, but when we pick people for an intermission activation it could be someone random.

It could be a season ticket holder. It could be someone who's here for their first game ever and you want to make that experience the best possible thing for them.

We're going to do the best of our ability to make this person a winner at the end of the day. 

What does it mean to you to be a part of the PWHL journey?

It means a lot. I only got into hockey in university because I was surrounded by it. I was going to classes in a building with a hockey team.

When women's hockey came around, I was like, “okay, this is really cool.”

To have it being done in the building that I work at, I'm getting paid to experience this right now. 

Such an insane moment.

Seeing more representation and seeing the league grow is amazing. Seeing the two new teams that came up this year, and all the takeover tour stuff and the demand for teams. I love that it's growing so rapidly.

I hope it continues to grow at this pace, because there's demand for it.

How did Jocks in Jills start?

I was a full-time employee at TSN when we started Jocks in Jills. I'm so lucky, Tessa Bonhomme is one of my friends, and she's someone that I grew up watching win an Olympic gold medal.

I started working with her at TSN around 2021/2022, which were interesting times in hockey because we were covering everything in bubbles. 

Then the PWHL came to fruition kind of right after the world championship in Brampton and Tess and I were so excited. TSN got the broadcasting rights, which we were so pumped about.

Candidly, we were a little bit underwhelmed by the level of coverage that everyone was planning to do around the PWHL. The games were going to be broadcasted, but it didn't feel like there was any effort being made into analysis or additional coverage around the games.

Tessa called me one night and was like, “podcast?” I was like, I don't know if two more white people need microphones, but it did feel like there was negative space.

There's a million hockey podcasts. There's some traditional hockey podcasts that sort of cover the PWHL, and there are some great fan podcasts of the PWHL as well, but there really wasn't anything that felt like good hockey talk.

I think we're stepping away from the era that covers women's sports with kid gloves.

That's how Jocks in Jills was born. The summer after that, the PWHL came to us and really liked what we were doing, and the league is innovative and wants to be the first of its kind to do anything.

We've become the first official in-house media for a league.

What has it been like seeing it grow from the very beginning?

The starkest difference…I was at that first game in downtown Toronto at Mattamy Athletic Center, where I spent so many days broadcasting games for the *Rams. It was cool to be back there, but as I was looking around, I was like, “this rink is not going to do it for very long.”

That obviously was the case because very soon after, the Sceptres were moved to the Coca-Cola Coliseum. 

The growth has been absolutely exponential, Vancouver's team is selling 14,000 tickets on Tuesday nights. It's truly wild. The amount of growth that has happened in just two seasons.

What does a week look like in your life?

All of the social components that you see from Jocks in Jills is me cutting it. I do all of our digital stuff. Tess and I's weeks look different every week.

We usually drop episodes on Mondays and Fridays. We will record most of the day on Mondays and we'll record most of the days on Thursdays.

I was not as corporate when I worked at TSN, now I'm in a lot of meetings. I do a ton of editing as well. Obviously on the social side of things and then during games, if I'm in the building, I'm capturing content, capturing photos.

If I'm out of the arena, I'm clipping highlights. I'm posting them, I'm saving them to folders so that we can play them during our episodes.

A lot of our week is recording and editing, watching games and coordinating with other departments on different initiatives and stuff.

Do you have any favourite moments?

We had Marie-Philip Poulin (external link)  on the podcast, it just felt like such a big one.

It's been one of our best performing episodes and having her and Tessa run through some of the memories from 2010, especially those iconic photos on the ice with the cigars.

Last year after the Walter cup finals, after Minnesota won, we were on the ground in Minnesota. We had the players come in, we were live rolling. We were live on the PWHL's YouTube page  (external link) the whole time.

Players would come through and talk to us, we had some hilarious conversations. It was some of the greatest content ever.

What does a week or day in your life look like for you?

On game days, we usually get to the rink… If it's a 7 p.m. puck drop, I want to say between like 11 and noon, sometimes a bit earlier, depending on what goes on or if we have any promos.

Then it's prepping the graphics, anything around the rink, filming content.

Heading over to the rink for arrivals for the players, getting all that content.

Then it picks up from arrivals, we edit the content, post, get some photos and video of off-ice warm-ups, go from there to on-ice warm-ups. 

It's pretty nonstop.

I try to lay out my calendar for the week or the next two weeks if I can. For when I'm going to practice filming mini mics, challenges, anything you can do for TikTok, because that's where the magic happens for the most part.

What do you think people don’t know enough about your job?

I think a lot of people don't realize that getting into social media means that it never sleeps. You have to have content every day, you have to stay relevant. 

The strategy that you create at the beginning of the season, when you're planning, could change two weeks into the year. You have to be flexible and able to adapt on the fly as things are happening. 

You see everything, every department on the business side somehow feeds into social, PR, merch, ticketing or in arena, everything comes back to promo on social somehow. You're wearing a lot of hats, doing a lot of jobs.

But I love it, especially as someone who grew up playing girls' hockey. It's nice to see these women have the platform they do and be a part of it. That's probably my favourite part.

What was it like to return to the Mattamy Athletic Centre?

It was crazy. It was actually one of the most full-circle moments I've ever experienced in my life. 

Actually one of the photographers knew that I went to TMU.

There were two rink boards side by side. One said TMU, and then the one next to it said PWHL. She got a photo of me in between both of them, which was really cool.

How has it been balancing your job with the Sceptres, school work as a Sport Media student and competing as a student athlete?

It’s definitely not the easiest to balance everything, but I have a fantastic support system. I consider myself to be very fortunate to have such incredible people in my corner that really make life a lot easier and less insane. I also work a couple of other jobs on top of the Sceptres, so I definitely stay busy, even in the offseason.

None of my jobs really feel like work, in the traditional sense of the word, so I consider myself to be very lucky to have the experiences that I do and get to call them “work.” Finding joy and satisfaction in my work allows me to stay motivated and on top of my many responsibilities.

Being a student athlete was something that I had always dreamed of. I grew up on the golf course, playing competitive golf. To me, competing is second nature. The demanding schedule of playing a sport at the collegiate level can be difficult to manage at times. However, I find sport to be a welcome escape from the hectic aspects of my life. I feel the same way about hosting games at Coca-Cola Coliseum: being surrounded by sport makes work feel all the more enjoyable.

What does a game day look like for you?

Game days can always look different for me. Sometimes I’ll have to go to class in the morning. One time I even had to write a midterm before a Sceptres game. On a typical game day, I’ll spend time reviewing my notes and getting ready. I’ll head down to the rink several hours before puck drop and prepare for the day ahead. We have our team meeting, run through mic checks, I go over the run of the show with my amazing co-host Kevin Michie, and before I know it it’ll be game time. During the game, I keep the fans pumped up and engaged while performing different activations.

What has been your favourite moment as the Sceptres' in-arena host?

I’m very lucky to work with an amazing group of people. My co-host, Kevin Michie, who I have worked with since the Sceptres’ inaugural season, has truly become one of my best friends. We make each other better professionally every single day. Getting to experience this journey with someone as supportive as him has made it all the more special. Although Kevin and I are at very different points in our lives and careers, we work together incredibly well. There is nobody I’d rather share the mic with on a game day.

I also get to work with some pretty incredible people behind the scenes like Sam Cleary and Veronica Sacco who have both now graduated from the Sport Media program at TMU. Getting to see them not only at school when they were still studying, but at work with the Toronto Sceptres is a great experience. I have so much love for them and our friendship that I know has grown stronger through our experiences with the PWHL.

What was your most memorable moment from the 2025-2026 Sceptres' season?

Hosting at Scotiabank Arena will always be an incredible highlight for me.

As a child, I remember how exciting it was to go to Toronto Maple Leafs and Raptors games with my family. I also got to host three Toronto Maple Leafs Next Generation Games for Sportsnet out of Scotiabank Arena. So, my history at the rink runs deep.

Never in a million years would I have believed you if you told me I’d be hosting a professional women's hockey game out of Scotiabank arena, let alone doing it twice.

Getting to host in 2025 was an incredible experience, and then doing it a second time for over in 2026 was just as special. The Toronto Sceptres won both games making it an even greater environment.

For both games I wore a custom made and fitted jacket a fan made for me. It truly is an incredible fan base and to have someone be willing to sew a jacket for me to wear? Insane.

You might notice that I wear a lot of friendship bracelets to the games. They each have different messages on them. Some of them are related to the Sceptres, others have my name on them. One thing they have in common is that they all come from fans. I’m not really sure how it started, but every time I would get a bracelet from a fan I would add it to my collection and wear them to the games. Since then, it kind of caught on, and I have two full wrists of friendship bracelets at every game that serve as a reminder of the incredible fanbase we have built over the course of the last three years.

Do you have any advice for incoming Sport Media students?

Don’t force yourself into a box. In a program as small as Sport Media, it can feel very intimidating socially. You might feel a lot of pressure to fit in and force yourself to be something you’re not. Stay true to who you are. Be your authentic self, and you’ll find all sorts of success.