Journalism 1 Blog #1

Interviewing Christopher Vopinek was probably the hardest thing did as a student in a journalism class. It took time to figure out what I was going to talk about, when I was going to do the interview, where I was going to interview Christopher, and how I was going to interview him.

Since Vopinek is a baseball player at El Camino College, I knew that I could do the interview at the baseball field and talk about what it's like being an athlete at the college level and also ask if he went through any adversities while playing baseball.

Vopinek said he was busy most of the time with school work and baseball, it was hard for me to get time from him to do the interview, but I was lucky enough to catch him after a practice and got to ask him some questions.

Now how I was going to interview him was the hardest part. I didn't whether to start off friendly or go in there with a serious attitude and ask the question right away.

Then I remembered learning in Journalism 1 that we should loosen up the environment a little bit by talk him to person we are interviewing. So I took that advice and just started talking to him like I would in a normal conversation, first by asking him how practice was, how his day went, etc.

When I was interviewing Vopinek, I asked him if he went through any adversity in his time playing baseball. He said that when he attended California State University, Sacramento to play baseball, he had a shoulder injury on his throwing arm that cost him a whole season.

Vopinek showed me a scar on his right shoulder, as there was still stitch marks from after the surgery. He also had a scar on his right elbow, which that doctors removed some muscle from there to replace it in the shoulder.

"This injury was probably the rough part of my life since I was injury-free in high school but never took care of my arm," Vopinek said. "But that also made me want to work hard to get better so I can get back on the diamond."

After the interview, Vopinek ran off the field through the center field gate with pride. He said that he wasn't going to take anything for granted because not being able to play of an injury was already hard enough on him.

Vopinek said, "I want to be an example to everyone on the team. I want to be remembered as the person that worked hard and never gave up, even when I hit a rough patch in life."