Recently winning an Emmy, Pascack Valley alumna, Dara Cooper, has held the role of Associate Director at ESPN’s SportsCenter for five years after her initial position at ESPN as Stage Manager in 2018. While Cooper has acquired many accomplishments in her young 20s, she owes her first experiences in journalism to her work on The Smoke Signal and Pascack Valley’s Video Production, now known as PVTV.

Cooper graduated from PV in 2013 and attended The Pennsylvania State University majoring in broadcast journalism. However, during her time at Valley, Cooper didn’t know she wanted to pursue a television career. 

“I always liked to write, and I always found that it came easy to me, but I didn’t think I wanted to do writing,” Cooper said. “I was part of the newspaper [The Smoke Signal] for a little bit, but it wasn’t really until I was at Penn State that I realized I wanted to get into TV.”

When she was applying to colleges, Cooper knew she wanted to explore journalism but she wasn’t drawn to print journalism. 

“I knew I didn’t want to do print journalism, and I felt like a lot of schools had mainly print stuff and not a lot of broadcasts,” Cooper said.

Ultimately, she chose to attend Penn State due to its broadcast journalism program and studio. Cooper discovered her passion for TV production during her freshman year after involving herself in various clubs and opportunities at Penn State.

“I was working on our Penn State News, which was a live show at the time, and I remember doing it for the first time and I thought it was so fun,” Cooper said. “I remember being in the studio and being live and thinking this is awesome. I want to work on something like this when I’m older.”

At this point in her college career, Cooper realized she had a strong interest in TV yet still had not found herself gearing towards the sports journalism field. However, in her junior year, her mom encouraged her to apply for an internship to work on the PSU jumbotron for athletics. With this experience, she discovered her love of working in the sports field.

“I started working on other sports like basketball and volleyball and I was like, ‘I think I want to work in sports, I really like it,’” Cooper said.

Cooper worked as a Technical Director at PSU which consisted of working a switchboard at sports events. With this job, she would choose highlight videos to display on the jumbotron.

After Cooper’s graduation, she applied to work for the Big 10 Network in Chicago in a six-week post-grad program where she worked in control rooms and learned more about sports. 

Following Cooper’s post-grad opportunity, she moved back to River Vale, NJ, and worked at CNBC in Englewood, NJ. However, Cooper didn’t feel connected to her work.

“I liked it. It was fun, but, honestly, it was too sad and too boring. I did not like business news and I just was like, this isn’t fun for me,” Cooper said.

Her next move was an attempt to get hired for ESPN. Cooper commented on how she always networked to push herself to get where she wanted in her career. 

Cooper noted that “ever since I was at PV or at Penn State I was constantly talking to people…I networked so much to get to where I am right now and I was constantly pushing and looking for the next thing.” 

Cooper commented on how she kept in touch with people while she was at Penn State. When she found a Stage Manager listing for ESPN in February of 2018 she credits her networking, saying, “that was what got me in the door.”

Beginning her work as an ESPN Stage Manager in July of 2018, Cooper worked in the SportsCenter Studio for the NFL.

“I was in the middle of the studio and was the contact between everyone in the studio and the director in the control room,” Cooper said. “I was giving cues [and] making sure everything flowed in the studio. And because of that, I got to do a ton of traveling.”

With this position, she traveled to Super Bowl LIV, College GameDay, and the Heisman Trophy Ceremony. Then, in August 2019, Cooper was promoted to Associate Director and still holds this role today.

As Associate Director, Cooper works on the director’s side of the production, controlling how the show looks. Some of her tasks consist of counting videos out to the director to ensure that they put the highlights out at the right time and she is also responsible for communication.

“The other night, I had a show when we were coming off of the Texans and Ravens game…so I’m in charge of the communication between the [games] coming to us,” Cooper said. “I’m constantly talking to different people.”

Cooper ultimately describes her job as, “[making] sure the show flows as simply and as smoothly for the director as possible.” 

“I love [my job] because I get to be in the control room and it’s live and so much can happen,” Cooper said.

While Cooper enjoys her job, she did remark on the possible negatives of her work. 

“I work in sports 24/7, 365 days a year. I work nights, I work holidays, I work super early mornings, or I’m at work until 3 a.m. so that’s the downside,” Cooper said. “Sports are at night [and] sports are on the weekend. So our jobs are always happening.”

However, the stability of her job was jeopardized when COVID-19 hit.

“COVID-19 was the first time that I was like, wow, I really could lose a job because there’s always sports happening and COVID-19 canceled all sports, but we still were working during it [the pandemic],” Cooper said.

Despite the unusual schedule due to the consistency of sports, Cooper loves her job.

“I like that it’s not a typical nine-to-five Monday through Friday,” Cooper said.

On May 22, 2023, the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences announced the winners of the 44th Annual Sports Emmy. For the Outstanding Studio Show Daily category, ESPN’s SportsCenter won.

At this time, Cooper had been working as the lead associate director on the 11 p.m. SportsCenter, and due to her work, she received an Emmy.

“It’s such an honor, and it honestly makes all of the late nights and all the hard work worth it,” Cooper said.

When asked about what she believes helped her reach these achievements, Cooper said, “…you have to just go after what you want.”

“I never could have [seen] myself working in sports if you had asked me back at PV but I tried it and I took advantage of every opportunity,” Cooper said. “Try everything; you never know what is going to stick and what you’re going to like.”