What kind of car do you drive? 2020 Jeep Grand Cherokee. Favorite dinner meal? Snack? Chicken piccata; Hummus and peppers. What is your favorite big event in racing? Why? The Little Brown Jug. It is from Ohio and has Midwestern roots like me. This will be my 15th year working for the Jug and my ninth on the broadcast, so I'm really proud of that event. What is your favorite sport to watch? Team? Live I like hockey (Pittsburgh Penguins or Columbus Blue Jackets) and on TV football (Cleveland Browns). What is one thing about you most fans/bettors don't know? I got to ride at the Elitlopp in Sweden in 2016 as an outrider and some people don't know I've been an outrider for 20 years. Speaking of being an outrider, you spent a long time at Tioga but have done it at a number of big events. Do you miss it? I started in Ohio when I was 15 at the county fairs. I was at Northfield for a year as a back-up to the girl there. I rode at Tioga from 2006 to 2015. I don't miss it because one of my best friends still rides at all the tracks in Ohio and sometimes she pulls me back in and has me ride with her. So I do it just enough that I remember how to do it. I'd much rather be doing what I do now and just do that as needed. ► Sign up for our FREE DRF Harness Digest Newsletter Your horse was named Floyd. What is the bond like between outrider and horse? Floyd was the best horse I ever had. There are a lot of great outriders but if you ask anyone they all have that special horse. It takes a great horse to make an outrider great. To me the horse is 85% of the gig. It is a partnership and a trust. When you have a good horse and something happens, you know you can handle anything. We made a lot of saves and I thought someone must've been watching out for us, but really he just handled it like a pro. Anyone that knows Floyd, whether from Tioga, two Hambletonians or the 2010 Breeders Crown, they know he made his own history. He's special. What is one word that describes harness racing for you? Passion. How did harness racing enter your life? I was born into it. I'm third generation. My Grandpa quit the steel mill in 1962 and went to train horses full-time. My dad drove his first horse when he was 12 years old at the fairs back home. My dad and uncles are all trainers or drivers. My dad is pretty much retired. My mom was an outrider for 15 years before she died. Was there ever a chance you would become a trainer or driver? I always wanted to be an outrider because of my mom. I wanted to follow her footsteps. I graduated college with a degree in marketing and P.R. I always wanted to do Public Relations. Did I think the TV route was going to happen? No. The broadcasting thing just kind of came slowly and fell into my lap. I like training and jogging but outriding or what I do now was always the plan. You now work with the USTA as Publicity and Social Media Coordinator and that takes you to a lot of tracks. Which is your favorite? Why? It has been a big year moving up to be Content Manager. My favorite is The Meadowlands and of course The Red Mile in the fall. I like to go to the tracks in Ohio as well. This year you've been to Running Aces and Cumberland to name a couple. What were those like? All the tracks deserve their due and I'm kind of glad Mark Hall, Rich Johnston and I made the decision to do kind of a goodwill tour to visit all of these tracks which don't get a lot of attention. Those are the blue collar tracks of the sport. The horsemen are out there grinding it out every day. Running Aces is cool. It is casino and racing friendly. The casino is right on the apron and if you are in the casino you can see the racing. Tioga was the same and we got to go there this year. Hawthorne was nice and I think they have big plans for the future. As far as Cumberland Maine, they are racing at the fairgrounds now but have big plans for the future with a new racetrack. Is it exciting to see new tracks and how they are operated? Just growing up in racing, we always went to Northfield, Ohio, The Meadows. It is nice to see how the different tracks are run and who loves racing. Some of them love the racing and it really matters and some care more about the casinos. It would be nice to see some tracks get more coverage and others put more work into what they do. Sometimes it is just about available manpower. You've done a lot of on-air work during your career for The Meadowlands and Little Brown Jug. Can you talk about your development in that capacity? I always make a joke, I did my first broadcasting with Dave Bianconi at Northfield Park and he likes to say he gets all the credit. I was involved with some things with Justin Horowitz at Tioga, but when Jeff Gural called me and asked if I would go to The Meadowlands, I wasn't remotely ready to go there. They threw me in and I was so lucky to be able to work with Sam [McKee], Ken [Warkentin] and Hollywood [Heyden]. They are true Hall of Famers. They are the best and they made me better. I wouldn't remotely be where I am today without them. With the Jug, I was working behind the scenes as a stage manager and something happened with Ellie Sarama and the position became available. Now things have just progressed with the USTA. I got lucky to work with some of the best and if you hang on with them it only makes you better. What was your favorite moment covering harness racing? I know it was just yesterday but the match race we did with Tim Tetrick and UFC Lightweight Champion Charles Oliveira at Yonkers, it was bigger than I even thought it would be. I was captain on the whole project. Other than that would be the 2015 Little Brown Jug when Wiggle It Jiggleit beat Lost For Words. That was my last Jug with Sam and it was probably one of the best races ever for pacers. What were the difficulties in arranging the match race? The hardest part was that we had a week to get it done and he was only here from Monday to Wednesday. We had to get the venue and it had to be Yonkers because he was going to be in New York. In my interview with Charles I mentioned Tim and he told me right after that if we do something he wanted to be involved. It was a no-brainer to pull in Tetrick with his reach on social media and with him just going into the Hall of Fame. The biggest things were just timing and getting it all together. The reach was huge. They bet on it in Australia. People were reaching out to me from Europe asking how to watch it. What I'm most proud of is that the UFC film crew came out all the way from California to film it. I felt like we did the best we could do. Was the match race a learning experience that could perhaps propel future celebrity events to help promote the sport? Since that event we've had a connection with [NBA 2020-21 MVP] Nikola Jokic. He doesn't want to do anything quite as big but by getting the match race out there we accomplished getting attention from people like him. Devin White, the linebacker from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, I think something with him will be our next thing. I like that the event showed that as an industry we could all work together. Yonkers, MGM, USTA, Blue Chip Farms, Tetrick Racing all pulled together. It wouldn't have been as successful without one of them involved. It showed that we can do this and drive more fans to harness racing. Which is your favorite horse from your time in the sport? I had some nice horses I have owned. There are two that were really special to me. One was Whoyoucallingafool. He was just a claimer that I had with the guy I was with for a long time and he won like 17 or 18 races for us. Pittsburgh Hanover was a trotter that I had for a couple of years in Ohio that we paid nothing for and he made us a ton of money. He was really good to us. As far as horses I liked to watch, Anndrovette was one of my favorites and Tall Dark Stranger was really impressive. Also Market Share. What is the best advice you've ever gotten about harness racing? Sam [McKee] always said to keep your head down, stay in your lane and do what you do. He told me that not everyone is going to like you but keep doing your best. If you could interview anyone from harness racing history, who would it be with and why? I've gotten to interview a lot of cool people. Probably Stanley Dancer. Who is one person still active that you haven't interviewed but are looking forward to the opportunity? Stefan Melander. I enjoyed meeting him in Sweden and I would love to chat with him. I like him a lot. Is there a track or race that you haven't covered that remains on your bucket list? I've covered so many in the U.S. If Solvalla called and wanted us to cover the Elitlopp I would go. Also the Prix. D' Amerique. Either one on the television side would be great. One of your recent projects has been "Behind the Mic" where you interview announcers at different tracks. Was that your idea? Do you think people are enjoying those segments? That was Rich Johnston's idea. He's the production manager for our team. I think it has gone over really well. We really wanted to give more coverage in the industry to the jobs that are more unrecognized and behind the scenes. Those have gone really well and they've been fun to do. If you had the power to change one thing in the sport, what would it be? I wish that people would invest more to market the sport and put us on a bigger level. We are all doing big things but only inside the sport. I wish we could compete with the  Thoroughbreds in terms of coverage. How do you view the future of harness racing? It is a big industry that employees a lot of people, but it is a blue collar industry. It needs to keep building. Some changes will definitely need to be made to keep our sport alive and attract new fans. It will keep itself alive and thriving, but I really hope for the best for it for people like you and me who love it. I feel like people are interested in it but we have to keep doing fun things like the match race to keep people interested. Time for the stretch drive: Best Horse You Ever Saw?: Wiggle It Jiggleit and Muscle Hill. Best Driver Ever?: Brian Sears. Best Trainer Ever?: Jimmy Takter. Favorite TV Show?: Law & Order SVU. Trotters or Pacers?: I love them both so much but I'm partial to a hard-hitting claimer that goes out there each week and does their work. Those are my favorites.