Most Eastern students were huddled around a television set with friends to watch one of the biggest spectacles of the year — the Super Bowl on Jan. 26.

But senior Sarah Marten had a slightly different perspective of the game. As an assistant for ABC television’s sideline reporter, Melissa Stark, Marten was one of the rare fortunate souls watching the game in person in San Diego.

“There was a pregame concert and the stadium was shaking,” Marten said. “At first I just thought it was a game, but when they were introducing the players, I thought about how 150 million people were watching.”

Marten spent this past NFL season working the sidelines with Stark and the rest of the Monday Night Football staff, but Marten’s ascent to one of the most coveted jobs in professional sports is a story of hard work.

Marten is in her fourth year at Eastern and is working for a double degree in speech communications and journalism with a public relations minor. Needing 150 credit hours to graduate, Marten took 21 credit hours during the fall semester and is taking 21 hours again this spring. She did all of this while spending her weekends traveling to cities across the country with Monday Night Football.

Marten said after working on Saturdays she would go back to the hotel and spend four hours studying.

To travel with Monday Night Football, Marten had to miss Friday and Monday classes, but she was able to rearrange her schedule so she would only miss one class each day.

“When I found out I got the Monday Night Football job, I e-mailed all my professors and told them, ‘Here is my situation. I’m going to be missing a lot of classes,’ and then I began rescheduling classes,” Marten said.

It didn’t take long for Marten to get a job with ABC. After working for WEIU-TV for two years, Marten decided she wanted something different.

“I had been talking to (Mike Bradd, Marten’s advisor) during the first semester junior year about how I wasn’t happy doing local TV,” Marten said. “I told him I liked doing TV; I just wanted to do national.”

Bradd began to look for outlets into the national media and found one at Eastern. Academic advisor Julie Sterling and her husband, former Eastern history professor Bob Sterling, both work with ABC on the Indy Racing League. Bob Sterling has worked with ABC for nearly 30 years and has written for National Speed Sport News, a weekly newspaper devoted to motor racing.

“Since I had this contact, I figured I had to get something set up with a major outlet,” Julie Sterling said.

Marten and WEIU sports anchor Mitch Brehm each received internships with ABC at the Indianapolis 500. For the three weeks leading up to the race, the interns were asked to perform various tasks the producers asked them to do.

Along with the various tasks Marten was asked to do, she also helped producer Ross Molloi create a three-minute tease for the race.

Marten said she spent about 125 hours working on the tease along with Molloi and one other staff member.

They reenacted the ending of the 1992 Indy 500 between Scott Goodyear and Al Unser Jr. The staff was able to get the original cars on the track at night and used smoke and other special effects.

The tease also required some casting, and Marten had a large part of it.

She needed to find four actors for the reenactment and went to local talent agencies to find actors for the tease.

“I saw about 100 people in one day,” Marten said. “It was one of the longest days in my life because they all said the same thing over and over again.”

Marten said she earned the reputation of a hard worker while she was working on the Indianapolis 500. Because of her work ethic, ABC asked her to continue working with them during the summer.

While covering the Indy Racing League, Marten met Jeff Dufine, one of the producers of Monday Night Football.

“I contacted him about Monday Night Football,” Marten said. “He told me about a job with Monday Night Football and said I would be helping on the sidelines. When he told me, I thought I would just be a go-for on the sideline.”

Dufine told Marten to call in to a weekly conference call.

“It was just a conference call,” Marten said. “Every sport ABC does has one every week, so I didn’t think anything of it.”

During the conference call, Marten spoke with Monday Night Football announcers Al Michaels and John Madden along with Stark.