BY
Jorius Chuwa

Producer

Hype Issue #70

Published on

July 26

2025

Join our Producer Jorius Chuwa as he brings you behind the scenes on his first day as a sports reporter at the World Aquatics Championship

I must admit that I’ve always been skeptical about reporters.  This might sound like an odd sentiment coming from a member of a media publication, but it seemed to me that, as of late, reporters have favoured chasing clickbait-worthy headlines rather than doing honest journalism. So, I decided to try my hand at reporting myself; after all, how could I judge something without experiencing it first?

It was an enlightening experience to say the least, so let’s rewind the clock to 11 July, my first day on the job at the World Aquatics Championship, the biennial world championship for water-based sports.

8am – 8.45am: Preparation for the upcoming games

The first task on my list  was to collect my uniform and temporary identification card from the accreditation centre (which was about a ten minute walk from Stadium MRT station). At this point, I was feeling pretty excited. After all, this was my first time exploring behind the scenes of a professional event.

The UrbanWire team on location, clad in World Aquatics Championship gear. Pictured here from left to right is Jorius, Gwen, Kai Lin and Dylan. (Screenshot taken from fmswritersroom TikTok page)

9am – 3pm: The games begin

At 9am, I started my shift by making my way up to the media tribune, a row of seats marked in black that are located across the pool from the audience stands and strictly reserved for media personnel.

My view from the media tribune as I took notes on my phones and physical start sheets. Photo courtesy of Dylan Teh

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The first event I was covering was Water Polo, here’s what I got up to.

First up, we had to decide whom each of us was going to interview. So, since the first match was between South Africa and Spain, I chose to interview the captain of the South African team while my teammate, Dylan, chose to interview the captain of the Spanish team.

During the course of the match, I jotted down potential questions for the athletes in the notes app on my phone along with taking note of the physical start sheet to keep track of any top scorers that could also be interviewed. This allowed me to refer to my phone in the mix zone, a media zone where the athletes would walk through to get flagged down for short interviews, in case I momentarily “blanked out” in front of the athletes.

Overall, it was a walkover for Spain which was not surprising considering their previous success in the 2024 Paris Olympics. So once the match was over, I took my prepared questions down to the mix zone. This was where the majority of the action would occur and where I faced most of my challenges as a reporter. As not all the team captains had readily available profile photos, it was almost a pure guessing game to find them in the zone. 

Thinking ahead, the team and I had already prepared some general questions to ask the athletes in case we panicked. So that was covered, or so I thought. 

This was a whole different ball game, pun intended. 

After the match, as I entered the mix zone, the Spanish team first entered the area and began walking past my zone in a celebratory mood. It was an incredibly fast-paced environment. We had to compete with reporters from professional news agencies to try and get a sound-bite from each athlete as they walked by.

As Dylan initially faced difficulties in getting the attention of the Spanish athletes, I decided to step up and randomly waved down one of the athletes so that we would at least have a quote from the winning team. Initially, I panicked a little as I had angled my questions towards the South African team captain so I resorted to using the general questions that the team had prepared earlier. 

Despite my nervous stutter and her poor command of English, she answered the questions to the best of her ability and was very honest about her feelings during the game. Coincidentally, it then turned out that I had actually interviewed the Spanish captain and I only found out once I asked her to state her name and team number. 

As I walked out of the mix zone, clutching my phone with the precious first interview recorded as a voice memo, all I could think of was how I had successfully survived my first interview in a professional capacity.

After arriving at the media tribune, I sat down together with the rest of my team and transcribed my interview. Thankfully, the press reporters for the WAC were lenient with my deadlines and allowed me to take my time to transcribe the quotes and transfer them to a master document half an hour after the first match ended. 

The next three matches after this were a relative breeze as I got used to the general flow of reporting. Meanwhile, for the second match between Argentina and The Netherlands, I focused on drafting my questions for the third match between the USA and China. 

The physical start sheets I used to keep track of top scorers and the quarterly scores of each match. Eventually I even ended up having to write my questions on the back of the sheet of paper when my phone had low battery. 

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For the third and fourth matches, USA versus China, and France versus Great Britain, I decided to interview the coach of the Chinese team and the French team captain respectively. 

Impressively, both provided great insights towards the performance of their respective teams from different perspectives, even while speaking in their non-native language. The Chinese team’s coach explained the strengths of the USA, varying from their strong centre and defence while the French captain expressed how she was still proud of her team as many of them were newbies to the world championship and conceded that Britain was a worthy adversary.

4pm – 8.30pm: Practice, practice, practice

The second half of my day pretty much felt like an extended practice session for me to build up momentum.  After having a late lunch, I went back to the media tribune and was greeted by the fifth match of the day, Japan versus Croatia. It was a walkover by Japan with 25 goals over the 4 quarters, but it was a hard-fought match by Croatia as they clawed back 12 goals. 

This time, I volunteered to interview the Croatian team captain who provided a gracious answer regarding how her team already tried her best and how they would work harder for the next round. 

The sixth and seventh matches were a breeze too, Italy versus New Zealand, and the much anticipated Singapore versus Australia. 

I managed to interview the team captains of both Italy and Australia respectively. The Italian team captain’s responses had to be translated by her coach, but she still provided an intriguing answer towards clawing back a victory. 

She expressed how she did not like the feeling of being “hunted” throughout the game due to their past successes as a team during previous world championships, so that fueled their motivation to make a comeback against New Zealand in the third and fourth quarters of the game. She also spoke about the hard work that went into their training for the games, which I found quite inspiring.

Meanwhile, the team captain of Australia had a much different answer thanks to Australia’s massive 34 – 2 win against Singapore. She expressed how this match motivated the team greatly and that this game provided the new members of the team with experience for their next matches. Her answer was also by far the easiest to transcribe for the day as her answer was crisp and concise due to her strong command of English.

After this match, all I could imagine was curling up in my cozy bed at home, as I was tired beyond belief. Running up and down the stairs towards the mix zone and back to my seat in the media tribune after every match really took a toll. Thankfully, I was released early before the final match of the day by the WAC press reporters so that I would have ample time to get home before the Circle Line MRT station shut for the night.

What I really learnt about reporting

On the ground sports reporting is hard. 

You have to sustain long hours watching match after match and coming up with suitable questions to get the most impactful answers. 

However, there is certainly a very fulfilling aspect to this job in terms of experiencing how the athletes responded to their respective wins or losses. Whether it was the coach from China conceding that his team tried their very best despite the might of the American team, or the Italian team captain acknowledging that their win was not an easy feat at all and required a lot of hard work, training behind the scenes to make it happen.

I also learnt first-hand that reporting was not just about collecting quotes for a hot scoop. 

Reporting is about achieving the most accurate version of the truth to the best of your ability and choosing the right quotes to tell the story of perseverance and how people strive to do the best in their lives.