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| Minnesota Twins broadcast intern Nate Rowan |
As it turns out, those experiences helped lay the foundation for his current position as a broadcast intern for the Minnesota Twins as well as his plans for the future.
Rowan, a 2005 Farmington grad, worked after high school but got turned on to college after trips to Moorhead to watch Tony Webber, one of his high school friends, play hockey for Concordia College.
"I knew when I decided to go school the only thing I lived and breathed every day was sports," Rowan said, "and I swore to myself that I was going to chose a career that I was going to enjoy every day of my life."
Rowan selected journalism as a major and that choice led to a reporter position for the Concordian, the campus newspaper. Then he secured a part-time job with the school's Sports Information Department keeping stats, doing public address announcing and eventually providing play-by-play for the school radio and website.
"I got thrown into that fire pretty fast," Rowan said of his play-by-play duties, "and I'm not going to lie, it was pretty bad the first time. But like most things, the more I did it, the better I got."
While working for the Sports Information Department, Rowan also volunteered to help Fox Sports North with its coverage of the annual Hockey Day Minnesota, a move that would eventually help him meet veteran Twins baseball announcer Dick Bremer.
For his final college credits, Rowan took an internship with the Kansas City T-Bones, a member of the American Association, the same minor league as that of the St. Paul Saints. There he was a jack-of-all trades, an experience that re-enforced his career choice.
"It showed me that working in sports was the only thing I was going to enjoy getting up for every day," he said.
Rowan thinks his earlier brush with Bremer didn't hurt his selection as one of two broadcast interns for Minnesota's 2012 season as the long-time play-by-play voice of the Twins gave him as sterling recommendation.
Rowan hits Target Field about four hours prior to game time each day and writes "drops" that radio broadcasters read during the game. He also researches the prior day's games and pulls out highlights from teams in the Twins minor league teams.
He interviews players before the game and edits tape to be used during that day's broadcast.
During the games Rowan monitors other games around the country and selects highlights to be used by Kris Atteberry in his "Scoreboard Update" segments during Twins broadcasts.
After the game, he records manager Ron Gardenhire's press conference and cuts snippets to be used in the post-game show.
"Recently I have had the opportunity to produce the game," Rowan said. "That is essentially controlling most of what happens in a broadcast, things like cuing the broadcasters back from breaks; communicating with the board operator and on-site engineer and cutting up highlights from the game."
Rowan's internship ends on October 5 after which he plans to look for more work in the sports industry.
"I plan on attending the baseball winter meetings and securing a job doing play-by-play in the minor leagues," he said. "Many of those jobs come with media relations work and I enjoying doing both."
One thing is for sure. Rowan is confident his career path is heading in the right direction.
"I love baseball and I have really enjoyed my time with the Twins," he said. "Before I went to college I had jobs where I would say 'I have to go to work today'.
"With the Twins, that has changed to "I get to go to work today.'...It doesn't get much better than that."
