Photo courtesy of Chloe Wojtanik

Internship

Finding Passion and Purpose in a Male-Dominated Industry: A Buffalo Bisons Minor League Baseball Team Internship

Chloe Wojtanik (COM’25) talks about a summer doing “a job that I love”

It’s 8 pm on a summer night in Buffalo, N.Y., and Sahlen Field buzzes with energy. Excited fans crowd the stadium seats, baseball players dot the bright green field, and sudden cheers erupt as the Buffalo Bisons Minor League Baseball team faces off against their competition. 

While most fans take breaks from watching the game to pick up snacks, talk to friends, or snap pictures, one person’s concentration doesn’t waver. It’s Chloe Wojtanik (COM’25), a media intern for the Buffalo Bisons, the Triple-A affiliate of the Toronto Blue Jays. 

From an office overlooking the center of the field, Wojtanik keeps track of each strike, groundout, and new development. She enters the game’s movements into her laptop, and like magic, the massive jumbotron looming over the field lights up in response.

Though tired from a long day—she starts work at 9:30 am and is sometimes there until 10 pm if there’s a game—when it’s time for her to man the 16,600 person-capacity stadium’s jumbotron, she can “flip a switch,” she says.

“I know I have a job to do, and it’s a job that I love,” she says. “There are people in the stands relying on me to put in the count so they can know what’s going on in the game.” 

Wojtanik, a journalism major and PR minor, started her internship this summer. She says she’s dreamed of becoming a sports journalist since she was 10. 

Growing up in Buffalo, she spent almost every weekend going to a baseball game or one of her brother’s hockey tournaments. She says she found it impossible to resist the allure and excitement of the sports industry. “It was everything to me,” she says. “It was the biggest part of my life.” 

However, as a young girl interested in sports, Wojtanik says she was often upset by a lack of female representation in the industry. She regularly watched ESPN, but almost never saw a female sports journalist on screen. While at first this deterred her from entering the sports industry, she realized over time that she knew more than some of the station’s male analysts. 

“Seeing the guys sometimes fueled me with anger,” she says. “And I took that fuel and put it to something more positive and made it push me more.” 

Fast forward to her first day interning for the Buffalo Bisons. Wojtanik opened her Zoom to join an orientation meeting, only to discover she was the only female intern joining the team. The experience jarred her, she says. “People think that girls don’t belong in sports and that it’s a man’s job,” she says. “So when I realized I was the only girl intern I was a little uncomfortable.” 

But despite that initial discomfort, Wojtanik chose to view being the only woman as an asset, motivating her to excel. “Just having that extra little fire lit under me has made me work that much harder and be that much quicker and be that much more involved,” she says. 

That ambition and drive didn’t go unnoticed by Pat Malacaro, Wojtanik’s mentor and head of the Buffalo Bisons internship program. “I think she’s really established herself at the top of the pack this year,” Malacaro says, pointing to Wojtanik’s ability to grasp baseball knowledge quickly and ask the right questions when talking to players.

More than coffee-making 

Unlike other internships that assign more coffee-making than meaningful tasks, Wojtanik’s jam-packed workday puts her at the center of the Bisons media operations. 

In the morning she prints lineup cards and compiles statistics for the two teams playing that night. She then distributes the notes to players, managers, and general managers before setting up the jumbotron to display the starting lineup of players. 

When media representatives arrive to cover the game, she distributes notes to them and settles them in before taking up her post at the jumbotron. Once the game ends at about 10 pm, interns have 30 minutes to write up game stories and until midnight to finish game notes. 

“So I’m going home and I’m taking off my shoes, but I’m sitting right back down next to my laptop and getting the game notes done,” she says. 

Although it’s intense, she welcomes the fast-paced environment. “Sports always has that, and that’s something I’m always craving,” she says. “I love being busy and on my toes.” 

Most recently, Wojtanik interviewed Spencer Horwitz, a Bisons infielder and newly minted Major League Baseball player for the Toronto Blue Jays. 

“I was literally shaking—I was like, there’s no way I can do this,” she says, recalling her wait in the dugout to speak with Horwitz. After the interview, she texted her dad, Jim Wojtanik, that she had just interviewed her first professional player.

His reply: “The first of many.”

Jim Wojtanik says all his daughter has talked about since she was a little girl is working in sports. “I’ve never met someone more dedicated to their craft than her,” he says. “She eats, sleeps, and breathes sports journalism day in and day out.” 

Wojtanik—who hopes to work for the National Hockey League’s media and communications team in the future—recalls being the only girl on the field during the first Bisons batting practice she attended as an intern.

“The lasting impact I want is that a few years from now, you can go down to batting practice and look around the field and there’s going to be more than just one girl on there,” she says. 

“I just want to see that lasting change of, ‘Girls can do this too.’”