What you said is whether it is one we have built for our business or excuse me, whether
it is one we have built for a business or one we have cultivated for ourselves, our
families, our friends, and our communities are how we make sense of life, share our
experiences and engage with others in a meaningful way.
One of the stories that obviously really touched me was you spoke about the
loss of one of your swimmers and how the community, it was more than just
you sharing the news.
You, well, I mean, I'll let you speak on that.
Would you like to speak on that a little bit?
Yeah, no, I don't mind.
I use that as an example in my book.
It was, so Vance Sanders, who was a rising star, often compared to
Michael Phelps or Caleb Dressel and a standout swimmer, 15 years old.
And when we were broadcasting the meets, we would see these kids over and
over and over at the different meets.
We were doing, you know, two and three meets a weekend.
We would see them, we would interview them because we treated them like rock stars.
We'd be down doing the one-on-one interviews with them.
So we got to know a lot of the kids, the coaches and the teams very well.
And Vance, unfortunately, shot himself one day after swim practice.
He got very upset.
His little brother found him and we got a phone call from his coach,
Randy Reese, former Olympic coach.
He called up my husband, Joe, and said, I need you guys to spread this news before
rumors start going and everything else.
So he was asking Florida Swim Network to craft the news and spread it.
And so I sat down to write that and it was first very heartbreaking to us,
as it would be for anybody's, you know, a child that you know.
Life lost senselessly way too early.
And the manner, the fact that it was a suicide made it very difficult to write about.
And then I knew that many of the teams and many of the swimmers that knew him,
and many of the parents that knew him would be hearing about it the first time
from us, from what we wrote about it.
And so I really felt honored that we were asked to do that.
That our community trusted us enough to do it in a very sensitive
way versus sensationalized way.
But it really was one of the hardest things I've ever written.
You know, I wrote it and kept rewriting it and rewriting it.
And I, you know, I guess we did a good enough job that, you know, sensitive at
the same time, you know, conveyed the loss and what a tragedy it was that I later
found out that his mother actually used that blog post to send to her friends and
family to let them also know about the news.
So if you can build community in a way that trusts you to do the right thing
and to, you know, deliver for them and be there in times of need for them, then
that's another key component as a community builder.
It's our obligation.
Absolutely.
And I mean, the thing that stood out to me so much about that story is that
you really did build a family.
You built people that were not just people you saw at swim meets.
They weren't just the parents you spoke to.
It was truly a community that you could talk to about everything.