Sports fans dream of living the life Carlan Gay has had.
If you can imagine covering different sporting events in multiple countries, then you can see yourself in his shoes for that’s exactly what this once-aspiring sports broadcaster did to get to where he is now.
And why does he do what many aren’t built to do?
“I truly love it,” said Gay.
Most aspiring sports broadcasters would love to be in his place, but how many really have the drive, patience, nerve and mental and physical stamina to travel the road (literally) he has to get to where he is?
The answer is not many.
Gay’s journey began in Montreal and then Toronto, where he found his love of sports on the ice through Canada’s favorite sport, hockey.
In 1993, the Montreal Canadians won the Stanley Cup, and both the city and a young Carlan Gay went crazy.
“I got swept up in the hype,” Gay told me during our interview. “And that was my first true sports memory.”
So he picked up skates and a stick and began playing. Unfortunately, like many who grew up playing the game, hockey became a challenge for him to continue with due to the costs involved.
“It’s not cheap to play, especially growing up in a single family home.”
Couple the cost with the lack of seeing players who looked like him and the time playing hockey came to an end.
Then he and his family moved to Toronto, which coincided with the launch of the Raptors, and in 1998, the team drafted Vince Carter, and that’s when Gay found his new sport.
“Once Vince Carter showed up, that changed the entire landscape of sports in the entire country,” he said. “I don’t think people truly know how great of an impact he made to not just basketball in the country but to sports as a whole. He was the first superstar in Canada that didn’t play hockey in my lifetime.”
And while he still loved hockey, his focus shifted to basketball.
He played ball in school over the next few years and while he realized he wasn’t destined for the pros, he knew he wanted to be involved in sports in some capacity.
“I just wanted to get a paycheck in sports, and I was going to do whatever it took to do that,” said Gay.
And that’s when his future started taking shape.
He began taking classes in radio broadcasting at Seneca College in Toronto and ended up volunteering to in production and broadcasting at a local TV station to learn the ropes and gain experience.
No paycheck.
Just experience.
But broadcasting was what he wanted to do, so he stuck it out for two years, constructing sets, calling games, and breaking down sets, all without getting paid.
That’s something many would not or could not today, yet Carlan was all in.
So he covered baseball, volleyball, basketball, soccer, hockey and many other sports.
“It gave me some experience, but it also gave me the love of television,” said Gay. “It gave me the true understanding of what it takes to put on a show. I got the bug and I can say now that I’m probably more in love with TV than I am with sports.
“While sports brought me to the dance, I’m more interested in the business than I am sports.”
