From the Journalism Department that produced female sports reporting icons such as Claire Smith, KLN ‘79, now comes a new generation of women taking on the world of sports media by way of Twitter and podcast streaming services. Rebecca Werez, a fifth-year journalism transfer student, is already changing the face of audio hockey media as a part of three different hockey productions run by and for women — podcasts Mother Pucker and Locked on Devils, as well as PUCKERUpSports.com. She also serves as a role model for women looking to delve into sports media as the social media director of Klein College of Media and Commucniation’s Sports Media Society for Women (SMSW).

When Werez transferred to Temple University from Susquehanna University in 2017, she initially thought she would find her place in broadcast radio, and so she chose to major in media studies and production. She fell into podcasting through her lifelong love of hockey, which was only intensified by her then-recent move to Philadelphia, home of her beloved Flyers. Through her enthusiastic posts on Twitter about her new home team, she caught the attention of Anthony DiGrazio, the owner of Philly is Flyer. He recognized how well she knew the game and her unique opinions, and reached out on Twitter to ask her to join the team.

Soon after Werez and two additional women were added to the team, she noticed something; the site’s podcast, Gettin’ Bullied, was entirely male-run. This prompted her to ask her boss if she and her female colleagues could start a podcast of their own, and Mother Pucker was born.

After discovering her niche, Werez began to seek out more opportunities in the same general areas: sports media and podcasting. That’s how she stumbled on PUCKERUpSports, a completely women-run hockey news website, covering several NHL teams with correspondents across the country. Now as a Philadelphia correspondent, Werez naturally covers the Flyers.

With this solid background and network of women in sports media, she was more than prepared when her friend asked her to co-host Locked on Devils, which required Werez to learn the ins and outs of the New Jersey Devils, a team she was previously unfamiliar with. Keeping up with all three projects has kept her busy, but she said it has also taught her skills like time management.

When the SMSW started up at Klein, senior MSP major and vice president of the organization Brynna Haupt, Werez’s friend and colleague, suggested Werez immediately. Now a journalism major, she applied and was accepted, and has even come to realize that social media may be the “home” she was looking for in the Journalism Department.

“She has brought in new members, interacted with many on our social media, and has just brought an incredibly warm, welcoming, and positive atmosphere to e-board meetings, general assembly meetings, and representation at Temple-sponsored events,” Haupt said. “I greatly admire her passion, ambition, and exceptional work ethic, and I am so excited to see the great things she will do in the sports industry and the glass she will continue to shatter.”

These days, Werez’s challenges as a hockey podcaster and content creator are twofold: battling inequity and sexism in the pressbox along with keeping up on consistent content during the sports world lull caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. When there were no games to cover, Werez and her colleagues turned to more evergreen content and opinion pieces on the sport in general, something that she feels connects her to her female fanbase.

“I like to create content I know I would want to see,” she says. “But I definitely would say that a lot of my opinion articles are geared more toward my women audience.”

While she feels her pre- and post-game coverage resonates with all hockey fans, she believes uplifting women’s voices in sports is paramount because they are so rare.

“At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is supporting women in sports,” she said. “It is such a male-dominated field and career, that you just have to share our work, you have to talk about our work, you have to include us in panels and discussions and post-game interviews, and a lot of it stems from support.”