Colin Waitzman is a man on a mission when it comes to covering the sport he loves.
Track and field is his passion, and that might be putting it likely. The former collegiate pole vaulter for Mount St. Mary’s has vaulted his way onto the track and field media scene, and with his platform, Track World News, he’s looking to grow the sport by providing the fastest, most accurate coverage, while building relationships with those that he covers.
Track World News came to life in October of 2020. Waitzman hosted a show called Innovators Anonymous, where he’d interview successful businessmen, athletes, etc. Of everyone that he interviewed, the track and field guest left a lasting impression on him.
“I found that my favorite interviews that I did were of track athletes,” he said. “I interviewed my high school coach, Matt Ludwig and a few other people as well. And I realized that I enjoyed those interviews the best, and I’d much rather do this with track and field than regular business people.”
From there, he brainstormed names he felt would stand out for this new adventure. After some thought, he came up with Track World News.
Waitzman admits that he loves to be the first to do things, whether that’s being the first person in a line, or the first person to report the news. He used that passion for being first to mold Track World News and the pace in which track and field news was reported.
“The news you can do that the easiest, because it’s hard to be the first to interview someone, it’s really difficult to do,” he said. “So the second I see something happen, report on it. And I noticed that it got a lot of traction and a lot of clicks. I started developing that to tell these news stories. I’m enjoying that aspect as well as interviewing athletes.”
Waitzman said that the overall mission for Track World News is to be the fastest growing track and field media platform. For him personally, he’s always looking to do more than his competitors and other platforms to put out the best product possible.
“My thing is, I want to be the biggest area,” he said. “When people say I need to go to somebody for track and field, where should we go? Well let’s go to Track World News because they post a lot of content, I like it, it’s valuable and it’s accurate. That’s the mission for Track World News.”
Waitzman puts a great deal of work and effort into making sure he’s the best at what he does. He admitted that he’s still a student of the sport, and he put in the work to learn more about the profession. Just this year alone, he’s gone through multiple notebooks that are filled with notes that he’s written on the new things that he’s learned about the sport.
During the day, Waitzman sells season tickets for the New Jersey Devils hockey team, sometimes working 12 hours a day. At night, he spends five hours each night producing content for the platform and is willing to do whatever it takes to get the best product out, even if it means staying up late, canceling plans with friends or posting on his lunch break.
“I’ve always been of the mindset that If you want to do something, you might as well do it right and do it all the way,” he said.
The hard work that Waitzman has put in has paid off in different ways, including the growth of the platform. In June of 2021, he said he had 405 followers. A year later, he’s closing in on 10,000 followers.
“The growth that this has had is something that I cannot understand,” he said. “When I first made this podcast, my goal was to have more followers overall than my personal account, which at the time had 1600 followers.
The growth has been crazy,” he said. “I’m extraordinarily grateful for it, for whatever people like when it comes to my stuff. I’m glad that people do.”
In the future, Waitzman hopes to use his knowledge in sales to make a difference on the business aspect of track and field, with the hope of bringing money into the sport. But as far as the present is concerned, Waitzman loves the interactions and relationships that he’s built with the athletes. He wants his platform to be a safespace for the athletes to share their stories.
“The thing that I’ve enjoyed the most is connecting with athletes,” he said. “I’m able to have conversations with people who I never thought would know that I exist. There’s very prominent athletes that I can send a message to on Instagram and I know they’re going to respond, because we’ve built that relationship. That’s something that I take very seriously for multiple reasons. One, I think it’s cool to have these connections with people. Two, I think it’s valuable because now, I might be able to ask more in-depth questions when things are going on to tell someone’s story.
I want to be comfortable where if there’s an athlete that has an important story to tell, they feel comfortable telling it to me, because they know I’m going to broadcast to the people responsibly. That’s something I take very seriously.”
