STATESBORO, Ga. – The Georgia Southern Athletics Department and its multimedia partner, Learfield, will combine forces and resources today for a historic broadcast as two females will don the headsets to call a sporting event on campus. Tricia Fishbune and Maggie Tyler will have the call of Georgia Southern’s women’s soccer match Friday night against South Alabama for True Blue Live! as they become what is believed to be the first all-female broadcast crew in Sun Belt Conference history.
Both have had extensive time behind the mic, calling games for GS All-Access and ESPN3, but they haven’t worked together for a broadcast. That all changes Friday for the first of what is scheduled to be seven broadcasts this fall between volleyball, men’s soccer and women’s soccer on True Blue Live! and ESPN3.
“We are proud to have Maggie and Tricia as our first female broadcast team,” said Jeff Ferguson, general manager of the GS Sports Properties division. “Both have proven themselves as Georgia Southern’s first video reporters and I am proud to see them step into the broadcast booth this season.”
Specializing in broadcast media, Tyler creates weekly features, highlights and packages on the 17 varsity sports and conducts post-game interviews after all home football games and other main sporting events as a member of the athletics communications staff.
While attending Virginia Tech, Tyler was a pitcher on the Hokie softball team, helping lead the squad to three NCAA Regional appearances. As a senior, she earned first-team All-ACC and first-team all-region honors from the NFCA after winning 23 games and recording 245 strikeouts with a career-low 2.49 ERA. For her career, the Poquoson, Virginia, native won 56 games, had 19 shutouts, one no-hitter and finished with 700 strikeouts – third-most in program history.
Off the diamond, Tyler gained extensive broadcast experience working with ESPN3, WSLS-TV and HokiesXtra.
Fishbune serves as the coordinator of partnership services for the Georgia Southern Sports Properties group. She also helps coordinate video content for Blue and White Weekly, as well as content for GSEagles.com. Fishbune worked in the Georgia Southern Athletics Communications Office for the 2015-16 year as the main contact for the men’s and women’s tennis teams, track and field and women’s soccer.
In addition to working as an SID at Wisconsin, Fishbune was the ESPNU Campus Correspondent and contributed videos on the men’s basketball team, women’s soccer team and football team. She also worked for UW’s student-run television station as a producer and sports reporter, to help run the weekly newscast. One of her videos, which was co-produced with classmate Julia Skulstead, won the Milwaukee Press Award in 2015 for the Best Sports Story.
For the Wisconsin basketball team’s second consecutive Final Four appearance, Fishbune served as the on-field producer for SportsCenter in Madison, and conducted on-campus interviews and taped footage of the fans for ESPN’s flagship program and Good Morning America.
True Blue Live! is an arm of the new and revamped True Blue TV on GSEagles.com. Featuring live broadcasts, highlights, interviews and features, all content is free this year and can be viewed or listened to online or on any mobile device.
Learfield’s Georgia Southern Sports Properties is the university’s exclusive athletics multimedia rightsholder.
An industry leader for more than four decades, Learfield has a deep presence in the college athletics landscape nationwide. In addition to Georgia Southern, it manages the multimedia and sponsorship rights for nearly 130 collegiate institutions, conferences and arenas, and supports athletic departments at all competitive levels as title sponsor of the prestigious Learfield Directors’ Cup. Learfield also provides its collegiate partners access to professional concessions and ticket sales; branding, licensing and trademark consulting; digital and social platform expertise; campus-wide business and sponsorship development; and venue and technology systems through its affiliated companies.