NASCAR.com reporter’s road to success paved with drive, focus and hustle
Alan Cavanna grew up in Marlborough, Conn. – which is roughly between New York City and Boston – so he grew up around boys who wanted to be Roger Clemens, or Patrick Ewing, or Drew Bledsoe or Mark Messier.
The only child of George Cavanna and Sue Crawford, Alan was quite possibly the only kid in that quiet Hartford suburb who idolized NASCAR star Rusty Wallace.
But his dream wasn’t to be the 1989 Winston Cup Champion; his dream, really, was to interview him. To talk to lots of race car drivers, in fact, as well as crew chiefs and team owners; to tell stories about them, in front of a camera; and to get paid to do it.
Today, Cavanna is just shy of his second anniversary with Charlotte-based NASCAR Digital Media, where he serves as a video reporter and host for NASCAR.com and also as proof that sometimes childhood fantasies do come true.
“I’ve always wanted to do this one thing, and I never diverted from that,” says Cavanna, who started his dream job on Nov. 19, 2012, the day after he turned 30. “I don’t know. Sometimes dreams change. Mine didn’t. So maybe I’m just stubborn. Maybe I’m a stubborn idiot,” he says, laughing.
Racing came naturally to Cavanna. His grandfather, George, was a professional sprint car champion in New England in the 1940s; and as a youth his father raced Quarter Midgets, which are like go-karts but more powerful.
Around his ninth birthday, Alan began racing Quarter Midgets himself at tracks in nearby Meriden and Thompson, and at 15, he won the New England championship in his class.
Talking, however, didn’t seem to come naturally to Cavanna – at least in his parents’ view.
“He’d get in the car after school, and I’d say, ‘How was your day?’ And he’d say, ‘Fine.’ I’d ask, ‘What’d you do?’ He’d say, ‘Nothing,’ ” Sue Crawford says. “Yet Alan got on this kick: He never wanted to get into racing, he wanted to report about racing.”
“He sort of silently developed all this information within him, about the tracks, about everything involved with NASCAR,” George Cavanna says. “People were amazed by his ability to know all that at such a young age.”
Laying the groundwork
Before he even had reached RHAM High School in Hebron, Conn., Alan Cavanna already was set on attending Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, which had produced Bob Costas, Marv Albert, Mike Tirico and other sports broadcasters.
In high school, he volunteered to do the morning announcements to get a little experience, then got more by pitching in to help a guy in town with his public-access sports talk show – contributing a racing segment called “The Copa Cavanna,” with intro music by Barry Manilow.
And over the next dozen years, every step of the way, he put on a textbook display of hustle and focus.
Then WSOC in Charlotte came calling in June 2008, and although it again was a news reporting job, Cavanna saw the position as a big break that could pave the way for his biggest.
“Charlotte was always the goal,” he says. “If I wanted to be in NASCAR, I knew I had to be in Charlotte or some sort of NASCAR-oriented city. ... They (WSOC) knew I was a NASCAR fan, but they didn’t bring me here because I knew NASCAR. They made it clear: ‘Look, you’re not gonna do a lot of sports stories. Don’t come here thinking you're gonna do sports stories.’ ”
So what did Cavanna do? He made news out of sports.
He arrived in Charlotte during the height of the recession, and quickly pitched and did stories about how it was affecting NASCAR. Then in 2009, his bosses turned to him for his expertise throughout the controversy involving driver Jeremy Mayfield, who twice tested positive for methamphetamine and was suspended. Twitter had taken hold with the public, and Cavanna – returning to the handle “@CopaCavanna” – built a following with Mayfield- and other NASCAR-related tweets.
And when NASCAR Digital Media reached out to him in the fall of 2012, he leaped.
“Very quickly,” Cavanna says. “I never weighed the decision, like, ‘Well, I’m not gonna do this, I’ll wait for something better to come along, I’ll go do another live shot in the rain.’ No, this was it. This was the opportunity I’d been waiting for.”
He’s now winding down his second season of reporting racing news and hosting web series for NASCAR.com. Though he will be reporting this week in the run-up to the Bank of America 500 at Charlotte Motor Speedway, Cavanna will miss Saturday night’s race because it conflicts with his 10-year reunion at Syracuse.
Cavanna doesn't operate now as an independent journalist. NASCAR.com is owned by NASCAR and serves as the organization's official website.
“I’m still a huge race fan,” he says. “If there’s an awesome end to a race, I am still as excited as ever. The only difference now is that it doesn’t matter who wins. I’m still that same race fan that appreciates good racing, and I just have the opportunity to tell that story now, which is awesome.”
Cavanna pauses, just briefly, as he sits in his uptown office beneath the Charlotte Convention Center. It’s adorned with broadcasting awards; a trophy from a media go-kart race in Mooresville; a piston from an engine-build competition at Hendrick Motorsports; dirt from Eldora Speedway in Ohio; and several photos – including one of him with his dad at the Brickyard, and a sepia-toned shot of his grandfather next to a sprint car.
He leans in and smiles.
“I’ll tell you, though: I got to interview Rusty Wallace when he went into the Hall of Fame, and I geeked out on that a little bit. I’ll admit it.”
This story was originally published October 3, 2014 at 12:00 PM with the headline "NASCAR.com reporter’s road to success paved with drive, focus and hustle."