Sportsonics: a brief history
In 2018, I began working for the Oregon Ducks and the Eugene Emeralds. For the next three years, armed with my trusty Macbook, my tiny budget DJ controller, and whatever ancient analog mixer the facility was equipped with, I got to helm the audio production for hundreds of sporting events. I blasted the Autzen score horn for Justin Herbert bombs, turned up “Shout” for crowds mesmerized by Sabrina Ionescu’s wizardry, and spent countless hours editing walk-up songs & arranging themed game day playlists.
During my time in that world, I was convinced that the sound effects & music I was playing, along with those produced by the crowd, were actively influencing the game. It may have been the adrenaline talking, but nevertheless, an indomitable seed of interest was planted. I found that the literature regarding sound’s role in home advantage was wishy-washy, and I decided that I would helm the ship of exploration into this niche field.
Unfortunately, for the last seven years, my jading analysis paralysis has gotten me bogged down in ideas, and brainstorming, and outlines, and framework-building, and dancing around the subject matter rather than immersing myself in it. I spent more time re-writing introductory paragraphs than I spent doing any actual work. My career shifted from sports heaven to corporate sludge; I became a shadow artist of that pre-COVID rockstar.
One positive that came from this death spiral of procrastination and “real life” was the invention of a term: sportsonics. Its definition: “the interdisciplinary field concerning the use of sound in environments of athletic performance”.
At the tail end of 2024, I bought this domain to set a fire under my ass and get back to helming that ship that had long since sailed off-course. But after an initial spark, the site went untouched for almost a year. The Squarespace bill I got a few weeks ago was a gut punch.
My vision shifted in mid 2025; I decided that Sportsonics, now capitalized, would instead be the name of a small business, whose trade would be delivering services, products, and/or research related to the subject matter I’d defined so clearly. But true to form, all this spurred on was more re-working and re-wording and re-writing.
I can feel a dark cloud of regret looming above me, billowing and thundering and ready to follow me into my 30s. I need to do, to create, to make something of Sportsonics. I need to overcome these walls of procrastination and over-optimization that I keep running headfirst into.
So I'm trying again. But this time, I'm dropping the formality and the necessity for a perfectly polished end goal. I just want to do what feels right and good. And what feels right and good is to say that
Sportsonics is a brand, a no-holds-barred label that I can put on whatever comes of this website.
