Reel-life highlights

Volleyball players Megan Alders, right, and Callie Martin host “Raider Recap,” a weekly social media show that highlights Wright State student-athletes.

By Nick Phillips

“Check out these highlights!”

These words aren’t coming from the sports anchor on the local newscast. They’re from volleyball student-athletes Megan Alders and Callie Martin, who call all the shots as the brains behind their own video production, the Raider Recap.

“Raider Recap is a show we created to highlight the student-athletes,” described Alders, a senior in her second year as the host of the weekly video series. “When we first started making the show, we wanted to give more credit to the student-athletes who were doing well in their sports, and it’s also a fun way for people to interact with Wright State athletics.”

From hosting to production, and everything in between, the series has evolved from an idea by Alders in the fall of 2021 into a weekly must-see for Raider student-athletes and fans. The shows use video clips and commentary to condense into two minutes all the action from Wright State athletics over the previous week.

“Megan and I come into the athletic communications office each week,” Martin said of the process. “We write out our scripts, figure out what funny jokes we’re going to make, write out all the stats and things we’re going to talk about, sit at our desk and Nick [Phillips, assistant athletic director for communications] hits ‘record’ and we get after it.”

“Sometimes it’s a one-hit wonder and sometimes it takes 500 tries,” Alders added.

While the sports report on local news may only mention certain teams, Alders and Martin have one set plan weekly—recognize as many Raider student-athletes and teams for their performances as possible. In their first fall as co-hosts, the pair donned jerseys of the men’s and women’s soccer players who were named Horizon League Players of the Week, broke down the baseball team’s Fall World Series while wearing the uniforms of the captains, and highlighted promotions like T-shirt giveaways at upcoming games.

“It’s definitely fun when we see other student-athletes around and hear, ‘We saw ourselves on the Raider Recap!’ It’s really fun being able to highlight those student-athletes, then seeing them be excited they were a part of the show,” Alders said.

“Our coach (Travers Green) also loves the show. I can say that verbatim. He’s told me he thinks it’s the best show ever. He always tweets each show and lets us know he watched it. One time he called us clowns, but we let it slide because it was a pretty funny joke.”

Raider Recapis posted weekly on the Wright State Athletics Twitter account,
@WSURaiders, and on its Facebook page, Wright State University Athletics.

This article was originally published in the spring 2023 issue of the Wright State Magazine. Read more stories at wright.edu/magazine.