Ellery Platts

Marketing and Promotions Coordinator

Bachelor of Journalism (Hons), 2020

For me, there were so many options. By being able to do so many things, I was totally prepared for this lifestyle. I like being so involved.

Ellery Platts, BJ(Hons)’20, often finds herself running out the door to her job at Hockey Alberta wearing five or six hats. Metaphorically anyway.

As the Marketing and Promotions Coordinator for Hockey Alberta, she is a sports reporter, graphic designer, photojournalist, social media guru, storyteller and broadcaster all rolled into one. And that’s her day job.

Since 2019, she has run a photography business, It Takes 2 Media, specializing in sports photography for various leagues and teams, ranging from Canada’s men’s national basketball team to the PGA tour in Bermuda. With her trusty Canon, she takes photos capturing the atmosphere and set-up of games and tournaments, plus action shots and candids of athletes and fans. (She does engagement photos and family portraits too.)

No matter if it’s a weekend, an evening, or 9-to-5, you’re apt to find her at a rink or a court or a golf course talking to athletes and taking their photos. She also plays field hockey on a recreational team with her mom, “so I can get exercise and hang out with my mom.”

It’s a busy life but fun and fulfilling for such an avid sports fan. Ellery, 25, credits her time at the University of King’s College for her ability to juggle so many different tasks and manage her time. While enrolled in the demanding journalism program, she worked for King’s Athletics Department as a photographer, pitched in on the Dal Gazette, and trained, traveled and went to games as a varsity athlete on the Dal Tigers’ field hockey and the Blue Devils’ badminton teams.

“For me, there were so many options. By being able to do so many things, I was totally prepared for this lifestyle,” says Ellery, on a Zoom call from Airdrie, north of Calgary, Alta. “I like being so involved.”

After she graduated, Ellery was bestowed with the “Bleed Blue Award” for her outstanding contributions to King’s Athletics. But unfortunately, there was no fancy banquet with friends sitting at round tables and dressed to the nines, forgoing the usual shorts or sweats. Alas, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, the award was announced via Youtube video by King’s President William Lahey, dapper in a tuxedo with a black tie. As President Lahey loaded on the praise— “always happy and eager to help, she has unbelievable skill, an amazing personality and a lightness to match”—Ellery watched at home in Calgary, hardly seeing the screen through her tears.

“I was sitting in front of the computer crying my eyes out,” she confesses. Even now, she is apt to well up even thinking about it.

Graduating during Covid didn’t sour Ellery at all on her King’s experience, even though, she admits, her send-off was not at all as envisioned and it was tough to be separated from her friends.

But still she made the most of it: she finished her fourth-year honours project during lockdown, even though by then she and co-director Travis Devonport, BJ(Hons)’20, lived several provinces apart. With Ellery in Alberta and Travis in Nova Scotia, they finished editing their documentary film by sending files back and forth through Google. Called “The Lonest of Wolves,” the film follows Nova Scotian man Steve Skafte as he explores abandoned places and imagines what has been lost. Not only did the pair complete the documentary, they were awarded a Radio Television Digital News Foundation scholarship and the film was accepted to the FIN Atlantic International Film Festival, which in 2020 was totally an online affair.

“King’s is everything to me,” says Ellery, who was first introduced to its charms while visiting her older brother Daniel, BA(Hons)’19, during his fall study break. She was struck by the school’s “homey” feeling and how welcoming her brothers’ friends were.

“It was almost like a foreshadowing of how my friendships would go … It’s such a tight-knit community and everyone’s looking out for each other.”