Joel Villafana - Sport Anchor

I greet a bubbly but tired Joel Villafana at the lobby of TV6 newsroom. Its 1:30 pm on Friday and he’s taken time out of the whirlwind of activity that goes into creating the sport stories for the evening news, just to have this chat with me. He’s beginning to feel the strain of having been at work since 5 o’clock that morning to host the Sporting Edition program and his day is far from over.

It’s been a long road from Joel’s humble beginnings to where he is today as TV6’s sport anchor and host of the other TV6  sport programmes.

The journey began in the advertising department of the Mirror Newspaper where he was officially employed, but would spend any spare time he had in the Sports department. The editor Keith Sheppard noted Joel’s enthusiasm and thought he should put it to go use by writing a sports story.

“He didn’t need to ask me twice you know, I went away, visited a football game and wrote a story for him.”

That was the beginning of his part-time journalism career. He worked as an Advertising Exec by day and in his spare time wrote sport stories that would regularly appear in the TNT Mirror. He did that for seven years before having the courage and opportunity to become a fulltime sports journalist.

It was Tony Lee from I 95 Fm who told Joel Villafana that he had a great voice for radio. “I hear my own voice in my own head so I never knew I had a great voice for anything, my voice just sounded to me like my voice.”. Not only did Lee give Joel some career changing advice but he also gave him training and a job running the sports department at I 95 radio station.

Next came Joel’s  prestigious TT Proleague League career as he managed and edited their coverage and magazines. However, this stage doesn’t last very long as TV6 approached him to revamp their sports department and the rest as they say is now history.

His main issue with the industry is their lack of regard sometimes for understanding the importance of local sport news.” Ever since that day Tony Lee told me I had a big voice I have used it, not just for my job but to get the proper regard that the sports department and sports journalists deserve in exposure, pay , conditions everything.  I strive to have local sports journalism taken seriously. People think you just go and watch a bunch of games . On my day off I struggle to just relax and watch a game because my mind is trained to notice every detail needed to write a report.”

He jokingly attributes his long term, undying passion for sport to his deprivation from sport games when he was a youth. His strict mother wanted Joel to be focused on his academic studies, so he wasn’t allowed to attend after school sport training programs or have any non academic extra curricular activities. Therefore he feels he never got to fully develop nor explore his sporting capability. He quips, “ I’ve since forgiven my mom for what she did. But honestly, being a journalist is my only way of being able to be part of “the game”. If it wasn’t for this job, I’d have no other way of being a part of the action.”

He loves the way that every day is different in his job, “I never know what the story will be, or where it would take me as it develops over time. It's compelling,  I’m left with no choice but to follow it wherever it may go.”