Opportunity captured

Skeet were flying through the air on a sunny California day, and Tracie Marcum’s job was to photograph them — one step of her sports photography training as a contestant on new USA reality show The Moment. 

Marcum, 37, was a long way from her Chelsea home, but there was something much more uncomfortable about the situation. She witnessed her mother’s suicide by gunshot inside their home 30 years ago. 

“I don’t do guns,” she told the camera. “If this is part of my assignment, I can’t do this.”

Sports Illustrated photographer Lou Jones had set up the exercise not knowing Marcum’s background; he only knew was good training for a final challenge she would face to photograph stunt pilots from inside a helicopter.

But after talking to her husband on the phone, Marcum did what seemed the impossible.

“Face your demons, and they won’t be your demons any more, right?” she said as she walked into the range.

“It was tough, but I am glad that I sucked it up and did it,” she said, reflecting on the experience. “I realized at that moment I had to overcome that fear and stop letting that be something that held me back.”

Rewind a year: Marcum was an operations manager for a software company in Inverness. She had owned a wedding business for 10 years but sold it 12 years ago.

After that, she only pulled out her camera for her kids’ youth sports games. Her son, Taylor, now 17, played youth football and baseball, and daughter Kennedi, 10, played softball and basketball.

And somewhere in photographing her kids, a bigger dream was born: sports photography.

The sports world was nothing new to Marcum. Her dad raised her on Alabama football when she was growing up in nearby Wilsonville, and she writes a blog, gridirongirl.com, to inspire women to learn more about football. 

Marcum’s husband, John, was actually the one to nominate her for the opportunity that would change her life, and before long show host Kurt Warner was surprising her in her office in Inverness. Soon thereafter she was behind the camera in Los Angeles training for two weeks with Jones, a world-class photographer who has shot the past 12 Olympic Games.

The Moment, hosted by d former NFL star Warner (also a comeback kid — he bagged groceries before getting into the pros), gives ordinary Americans a chance to interview for a dream job. Contestants spend time training with a professional and then are given an interview to see if they can get their foot into the door.

“[Lou Jones] is a great guy, a great mentor,” Marcum said. “I told him if he wasn’t tough on me, I wouldn’t be able to do things.”

She knew she was rusty on photography coming onto the set, but as the skeet shooting exercise demonstrated, Jones knew what he was doing.

When it came time for her final interview with Sports Illustrated, Marcum said she was unsure about what they thought of her. They hated the first five of photos she showed them, but they liked the last three.  

The last three must have sold them. Within minutes, the Chelsea mom had an offer from the national sports magazine.

The decision to accept the offer had to be made that day. The couple had talked about it, but Marcum said she had to think through if she wanted to make the change for her whole family.

 “My husband said ‘You can’t have had this chance and walk away from it,’” she said, “so we decided to take it and go for it.”

Following filming, Marcum spent six months in New York training with the photo department at Sports Illustrated, where she learned what they look for in photos.

She returned to Chelsea the week before the show aired in April and plans to continue to freelance from her home. 

“I will probably cover a lot of SEC football, college basketball, whatever they need in the Southeast,” she said.

But the show did more than just give her a career opportunity.

“There has been an outpouring of people saying thankful for talking about suicide awareness on television,” she said.

Marcum had long been involved with American Foundation for Suicide Prevention — she even wore her Out of Darkness T-shirt from the annual walk at Heardmont Park on the show — but following the show it was time to do something more. 

“Since the show I felt like that is one of the things I was supposed to do,” she said, “to bring awareness to something people don’t want to bring out in the open.”

Now as a field advocate for AFSP, she meets with legislators in Montgomery to tell them about the importance of upcoming bills like ones that would grant funds for research for depression research.

Marcum said through The Moment she hoped to show her daughter that if there is something you really want to do you should follow your dreams. And of that she is living proof. 

To keep up with Marcum and her work, follow her on Twitter @traciemarcum.