5 minutes with Stephen Igoe ’14 Position: Founder/Publisher of Hoist The Colours and publisher of Carolina Panthers on 247Sports Degree: Bachelor’s in communication Hometown: Greenville If you’re an avid Pirate or Carolina Panthers fan, you might already know about Igoe. If not, get ready to bookmark his websites, www.HoistTheColours.net and www.car.247sports.com, and follow him on social media. I cover East Carolina sports and recruiting and the Carolina Panthers of the NFL. My primary job is covering ECU football, basketball and baseball games first-hand, along with recruiting, and providing content from a local online perspective that no one else can match. Hoist The Colours has become the leading brand for online ECU sports news. In 2015, our site had 7.38 million page views and reached around 400,000 users. The HTC Facebook page has more than 32,000 likes. The Panthers site has pulled in more than 17 million page views since I took over in August of 2015. That Facebook page has more than 200,000 likes. Growing up as a kid who followed ECU sports closely, I felt like there wasn’t enough of an online presence for Pirate sports information. East Carolina fans are simply the best. They have a passion for the sports teams here that is unmatched in North Carolina. As a freshman at ECU in 2010, I did my research and started Hoist The Colours on my own. It took a few years, but I worked my way up, gained media credentials and eventually signed on with 247Sports in 2012. When I started my website, I knew I had a natural ability to write about sports, but I didn’t know anything close to what I needed to. I was fortunate enough to have some incredible journalism and multimedia instructors who taught me the ins and outs. I always knew how to write words and state the facts, but they taught me how to tell stories. I learned two important lessons at ECU. First, to make it in the sports media field, you have to be willing to work your tail off. There are rarely any true off days, and you’re almost always on call. Second, it may sound cliché, but don’t ever let somebody tell you that you can’t do something. No one believed I could make a living working primarily through a website. But if you know what you’re doing, apply yourself and have the drive, anything is possible. We want to hear stories from alumni about how their experiences at ECU shaped them today and how they pass those lessons to others. Send us an email at easteditor@ecu.edu. Photograph by Cliff Hollis, ECU News Services
15