The world of sports broadcasting can be exciting, lucrative, and provide you with a chance to travel to do your job. There are several attributes that you must possess to move up in this career path. You'll obviously need to have a deep knowledge of sports, for example, but you'll also have to be someone who can speak clearly, concisely, and intelligently. If you have the sports knowledge part under control but you're looking to be better on the microphone, you may wish to turn to speech therapy. Speech therapists often work with ex-athletes-turned-broadcasters, and can help you to do a better job in this line of work. Here are some things that you'll work on.

Speed And Pacing

Your speech therapist will help you with your speed and pacing. It's easy to talk quickly, especially if you're nervous, but also if the action that you're describing is occurring rapidly. The problem with this approach, however, is that while occasional bursts of quick speech are OK, prolonged periods of talking quickly aren't very enjoyable to listen to. Your speech therapist, especially if he or she has worked with sports broadcasters in the past, will show you how to speak at a comfortable pace, as well as how to effectively use breaks in your commentary.

Enunciation

People who are listening to your broadcast want to be able to clearly understand what you're saying, so your speech therapist will spend lots of time on enunciation exercises with you. You'll learn how to not only deal with words that might seem tricky to say, but how to prevent your words from running into one another and being difficult to differentiate. It can be easy to mutter or slur your words together at times, and this part of your training will help you to avoid these mistakes when you're broadcasting.

Accent Management

If you have a slight or heavy regional accent, it may not impede you during your first broadcasting job. However, as you seek to work your way up in this industry, you'll commonly want to seek national jobs — and when you send demo tapes to prospective employers, your accent might seem too heavy. You can work with your speech therapist on learning how to say certain words in a different manner. Many notable national sports broadcasters have worked to lose their regional accents, and while this might be a bit of a challenge at first, it's an ideal reason to hire a speech therapist.

Contact a therapist, such as at Physical Therapy Institute, for more help.

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