Anja van Aswegen: Loving Sport!

For as long as I can remember, sport has always
played an important and fun role in my life. When I was three years old, my
father placed a tennis racket in my hand and began playing tennis with me in
our passage at home. 

As I grew up, my sisters would play tennis with me in
the street and we also played hockey, softball and rode our bicycles around the
neighbourhood. When we returned home from school in the afternoons, watching TV
was never an option in terms of entertainment as my parents believed there were
enough things we could do to keep ourselves busy. This is how it came about
that I became fascinated by the world of broadcasting.

During school holidays, my sisters and I would huddle
around the hi-fi set, plug in a microphone and ‘record’ our own radio shows –
we would produce adverts, interviews and sing, and then roll around with
laughter as we listened to our ‘show’ afterwards.

So it has been a dream come true to be in ‘real’
radio, where I volunteer for CCFm (Cape Community Fm) every week as a
co-presenter on the Saturday Sports Show. 

The radio station operates entirely on the
contributions and donations of the community and volunteers who tirelessly and
generously work to make it happen 24 hours a day.

The motto is "Changing Lives for Good" and this is
one of the reasons I was drawn to volunteering at the station – my beliefs and
values are very much aligned to what CCFm is actively doing in the local
community and I’ve always wanted to make a difference using the talents God has
given me.

I have a full time job as an Industrial Psychologist,
which I absolutely love, but earlier this year I felt it was time to use my
spare time more productively, so that I could make more of a difference and
also explore a different side of myself.  

Industrial Psychologists help organisations define
strategies, set policies, and implement practices involving the performance and
well-being of people at work. So you can imagine the surprise of my family and
friends when I told them I wanted to pursue presenting on radio in my spare
time! My husband was incredibly supportive as always and encouraged me to just go
for it.  

So I wrote in to CCFm and asked them how I could get
involved and they suggested I come in for a voice assessment, after which a
decision would be made. Going through the voice assessment was quite
nerve-wracking, so when I received a phone call from the Station Manager
letting me know that I had been successful, I was really happy!

They informed me that they thought it would be a good
idea if I became a co-presenter on the Saturday Sports show, and I readily
accepted.  From there, the producer and
head presenter of the show, Autram Jacobs, took me under his wing and has been
amazingly encouraging while he taught me everything I know about radio – from
engineering, producing, researching, putting together interesting stories and
setting up interviews, to speaking on air.

I have learnt that so much of radio is dependent on
the preparation that goes on behind the scenes (the unseen and unglamorous
part) and that without this preparation, our listeners would not receive the
quality of content that we believe is so important to the show.

My passion is to bring the spotlight on women in
sport, because so often women are not given the coverage in the media I believe
they deserve.  So every week I produce a
‘Women in Sports’ slot where I draw attention to some of the amazing women, in South Africa
and beyond, that are doing us proud in sport. 

This has been a real highlight for me and I’ve drawn
a great deal of inspiration from successful women in sport and media such as
Penny Heyns, Kass Naidoo and Natalie du Toit.

Being a community based radio station, we support
sports events or initiatives that seek to uplift the community through sport
and feature these every week in our show. Some of
the stories that have warmed our hearts are the Helping Hands sports day
where we supported the sports day for HIV orphaned kids with live crossings to
the studio on air (via our field reporters) and a toy give-away. Another
example is when we supported the Langa Tennis Club’s clean-up campaign at their
club, which also included live crossings to the studio on air and equipment
give-away.

Various sports teams and individual sportsmen in the
community, of school-going age, have had live interviews on air with us to
promote their fund-raising events for overseas sports trips, and local amateur
sports clubs come in regularly for interviews.

People often ask me how I ‘got in’ to radio, and I
believe it was a combination of God putting me in the right place at the right
time, as well as being willing to take the risk and learn something new about
myself.

My advice to women who aspire to be in broadcasting
one day is to start doing whatever you can in the meantime to gain exposure –
even if it means not being on air immediately – learn as much as you can
through volunteering at a local community radio station. And just be yourself,
not who others think you should be – reach for the dream in your heart and make
it happen!

Leading Ladies:
Woman of the Month- Carina Bruwer: Sounds of Silence
Style Star- Bianca Le Grange: Music in the Air
Woman in Media- Hendrien Grové: Talent Falls Near
gSTAR- Tarryn Chudleigh: Ripping the Might Fantastic

Monthly Regulars:
The Penny Heyns Series: Action III
Wonder Woman: Celebrating Life

Personal Accounts:
Dorah Nkgage: My gsport Attraction!

December Features:
Synchronised Swimming: Poetry in Motion
Star Search: Splash! Swimming Academy
5 Mins with Carol Joyce: Sprint Canoeing on High
5 Mins with Zeena Isaacs: World Cup Wonder
Waterpolo the New Rage: Eye on the Ball
Cosmo Awesome Sports Women: Wondrous Women
Clinique December Newsletter: Celebrate Beauty!