Leslie Dominique, a Chattahoochee High School and University of Miami grad, has been nominated for the Television Academy’s 43rd College Television Awards.
The College Television Awards recognize excellence in student-produced television programs and will take place in Los Angeles on April 13. According to a press release, Dominique and seven other classmates received a nomination in the “Sports” category for a segment called “SportsDesk: The Magazine Edition.” SportsDesk is a weekly show on the University of Miami’s student television channel UMTV.
Dominique plans to attend the awards along with the subject of her nominated video segment, 80-year-old marathon runner Courtney Barron.
The story focuses on Barron’s journey, in particular how for Barron, running is more than just exercise – it helped save his life. Following a bad breakup, Barron struggled with depression in his younger years. In Dominique’s piece, he credits his faith and running for helping him get through it.
“Running was a godsend,” Barron says in the segment. “It just made me feel like new money. I don’t take life for granted. I was definitely given another shot at life.”
For Dominique, who graduated from the University of Miami in 2022 and now works as a multimedia journalist and fill-in anchor with WTVC in Chattanooga, the nomination has offered her the chance to remember her college days and what led her to broadcast journalism in the first place. As a little girl, she loved entertainment –spurred along by an obsession with One Direction and Wendy Williams – and she loved recording herself and other people talking.
“It just became a thing, where I would just be in my room, secluded, recording myself or recording other people,” she said. “So I think when it came to being in high school, figuring out what I was gonna do, I think it just made sense, to me, to look into broadcast.”
She ended up at the University of Miami by happy accident (she originally meant to apply to Miami University in Ohio, but decided to stay south once she learned more about the University of Miami’s broadcasting program). It’s a good thing because otherwise, she would have never met Barron. While attending a marathon in Miami for a class, she and a friend noticed Barron, in part because of the shirt he was wearing that said he had been running for 50 years.
While intrigued, Dominque at first decided to leave things alone.
“I didn’t want to bother him or anything,” she said. “I was still shy. But he came up to us.”
Barron is the opposite of shy, which will become apparent to anyone who talks with him for more than a few minutes. As he remembers things, he asked Dominique if she liked his shirt, and she asked him if he wouldn’t mind giving a quick interview.
“Right now, as you can tell, I love to talk,” Barron said in a phone interview. “So that was right up my alley.”
When Dominique’s professor saw Barron in her class project, they asked her to get back in contact with him for a bigger story. The package became Dominique’s final project and was picked up by SportsDesk.
“He is the most social person I’ve met in my entire life,” Dominique said about Barron. “No one is a stranger to him. He was extremely friendly, he was so happy to talk to us.”
It’s been a couple of years since Dominique was in college, but the nomination has given her the chance to remember her time in school fondly.
“It’s just cool to be recognized for something from college when I’ve been two years in the industry as a reporter,” she said. “That piece still means so much to me, and Courtney as well. So it’s special.”
Barron, who is excited to join Dominique in Los Angeles for the awards, feels the same way.
“I was overjoyed,” he said about the nomination. “Just the other day, I said, ‘Leslie, get ready to go on the red carpet!’”
