Victoria Garcia
LIFE IN THE FAST LANE
W
hat began as an internship with NASCAR shortly after graduation put V I C TO R I A GARCIA ’13 on the track to a full-time job with the organization years later. As a production assistant for the International Broadcasting Department of NASCAR Media Group, Victoria spends her days doing a wide range of jobs, from creating TV pieces in the studio to being on the racetrack talking to drivers and getting video footage on race day. From NASCAR’s headquarters in Charlotte, N.C., Victoria creates pieces for NASCAR University that air on international TV stations and online. She covers topics like the history of Bill Elliott, Tony Stewart and the NASCAR Hall of Fame. “I create bumps and teases which are brief video clips that play before race day coverage airs live in other countries. I also cover the NASCAR Gander RV & Outdoors Truck Series, The Pace Lap, NASCAR Xfinity and Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series,” said Victoria. Victoria spent a quarter of last year’s race season traveling and working race days at the track. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this year’s season will not consist of any travel. Instead, Victoria will cover many of the races solo in the control room with an engineer in the other room. “Our regular weekly show, ‘The Pace Lap,’ has been cancelled as we cannot preview the current week’s race or recap the last race, because we would be at multiple locations weekly
38 SOUTHEASTERN
due to the pandemic. I will not be traveling at all the rest of the season due to safety and show cancellation. I’ll be technical directing by myself while my producer works remotely. That’s a new challenge that carries plenty of stress,” said Victoria. During last year’s race season, Victoria started highlighting different drivers and asking them fun questions to put together more creative remote pieces. “It gives me the opportunity to form relationships with the drivers, and it has helped me to create more pieces,” said Victoria. She also gets B-roll race day content, which are video clips without audio.
“My professors kept me fueled. Knowing the odds and knowing that I was the only girl in some of my classes, I felt so intimidated. They gave me the support I was lacking and helped build my confidence.” On typical race days, Victoria wears a lot of hats and fills a variety of roles. She mainly works as the producer, but on occasion she also oversees the technical aspects of the production and controls the graphics, audio and video sources. As a producer, her department has about two hours to create video highlights and race notes to send to news outlets around the world. These 52-minute, 15-minute and
five-minute pieces air in several hundred countries. “The day is so busy that if you blink you miss something. I’m constantly taking notes to supplement the video pieces we send out. Essentially I’m creating these pieces in my mind and calculating 52 minutes worth of content throughout the race,” she explained. Victoria’s love for television began at a young age, but she never imagined she would end up in sports broadcasting. She originally had aspirations to study broadcast meteorology and become a weather reporter, which led her to enroll as a broadcasting major at Southeastern in 2009. Southeastern gave Victoria her first taste of the broadcasting world. “Me, KRISTEN LEDLOW ’10, REBECCA VARGAS ’12 and some other broadcasting students helped start a show at SEU called 96 News, and I was the weather girl for two years. We treated it like a live broadcast but would edit it and then send it out to be aired to the Polk County area on PGTV. It was the first show to air outside of SEU,” said Victoria. Her classmates and professors became her family, and she still keeps in touch with them today. “My professors kept me fueled. Knowing the odds and knowing that I was the only girl in some of my classes, I felt so intimidated. They gave me the support I was lacking and helped build my confidence. They were my positive fuel helping and teaching me for hours after class,” said Victoria.
