By Chris Petersen
Title: Josh Worden Interviews on Oregon State University Athletics, 2020-2021
ID: MSS Worden
Primary Creator: Worden, Josh
Extent: 5.27 gigabytes. More info below.
Arrangement: The collection is organized chronologically into three series: 1. Interviews, 2020; 2. Interviews, 2021; 3. "Dynasty in the Woods" serial documentary, 2021.
Date Acquired: 00/00/2020
Languages of Materials: English [eng]
The Josh Worden Interviews on Oregon State University Athletics were recorded by Worden, an OSU alum, for syndication on a podcast titled Beaver Tales. Conducted primarily with former OSU athletes and coaches, the interviews touch on the highlights of each interviewee's athletic career while also documenting their lives following their departure from the university. The collection includes representation of nearly every varsity sport sponsored by Oregon State, with particular emphasis on Beaver baseball. Many of the baseball interviews were incorporated into a serial documentary titled "Dynasty in the Woods" that focuses on the 2018 College World Series-winning OSU baseball team; the episodes constituting this documentary are also held in the collection.
Born digital .mp3 audio files of each interview are available upon patron request.
The Beaver Tales podcast - the contents of which are described here as the Josh Worden Interviews on Oregon State University Athletics - was created by professional broadcaster and OSU alum Josh Worden in response to the circumstances brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. Launched in spring 2020, Beaver Tales was conceived as a mechanism to generate sports-related content during a period when all athletic competitions had been cancelled. Worden also used the podcast to collect material for a documentary-in-progress on the 2018 national champion OSU baseball team.
The collection principally consists of raw interview audio files saved to .mp3 format. Post-production elements used on the finalized podcast are not included in the collection. While most of the interviews are conducted with former OSU athletes, a smaller quantity feature the memories of OSU coaches, both past and present. A single interview with a current student-athlete - baseball pitcher Kevin Abel - is included in the collection.
Worden's interviews touch upon nearly every corner of OSU's athletics enterprise, with extra attention paid to the history of Oregon State baseball. Interviews with former football and men's basketball players are likewise a mainstay, with the collection also holding sessions featuring figures from women's basketball, cross-country, golf, gymnastics, soccer, softball, swimming, tennis, track and field, and volleyball. An interview with author Bob Welch on his book The Wizard of Foz, a biography of former OSU high jumper Dick Fosbury, is included as well. While memories of past performances and updates on current life circumstances are the primary focus of the sessions, many of the interviews also touch upon issues of particular consequence to the years 2020 and 2021, including the Covid-19 pandemic and racial inequality.
Several of the collection's interviews focus on Beaver baseball, and components of these were repurposed for a serial documentary that Worden produced and released in podcast form during the Spring and Summer months of 2021. Titled "Dynasty in the Woods," the eighteen-part documentary focuses on the rise of the OSU baseball program and culminates in a close look at the team's road to the College World Series title in 2018.
The collection is entirely born digital. Its contents are available for use upon patron request.
Josh Worden is a Corvallis native and the son of former Oregon State University head swimming coach Laura Worden. Josh attended OSU from 2013-2017, majoring in Digital Communication Arts. During his years as an undergraduate, Worden worked as a sports writer for The Daily Barometer and as Sports Director for KBVR-FM. His connection with student radio also saw him providing play-by-play and color commentary for multiple OSU athletic events, including football, basketball and softball games.
Following graduation, Worden has worked as a play-by-play announcer, radio personality and producer for KEJO-AM, where his responsibilities include pre-game and post-game duties for OSU football and baseball broadcasts, and a fill-in co-hosting role for the Joe Beaver local sports talk show.
The 2018 Oregon State University baseball team concluded the season with a record 55-12-1 (20-9-1 in Pac-12 conference play). After victories over Northwestern State, LSU and Minnesota in Regional and Super Regional Play, the Beavers worked their way through the losers bracket to claim the program's third College World Series title, defeating Arkansas in the final best-of-three series. The OSU roster included seven players awarded All American status: Nick Madrigal, Trevor Larnach, Cadyn Grenier, Adley Rutschman, Luke Heimlich, Bryce Fehmel and Jake Mulholland. In the months following the 2018 title, longtime OSU manager Pat Casey announced his retirement from college baseball. The series-clinching final victory over Arkansas was Casey's 900th win at Oregon State.
More Extent Information: 127 .mp3 audio files
Statement on Access: Collection is open for research.
Physical Access Note: Access .mp3 files of each of the recordings held in this collection are available on site or by patron request.
Acquisition Note: Collection materials were initially transferred by Josh Worden to the Special Collections and Archives Research Center in 2020. Later accessions have been transferred to SCARC through a shared online storage space.
Related Materials: Produced versions of these interviews have been released by Josh Worden at this online location. SCARC is also home to a great many collections that document the history of athletics at Oregon State University. Some among them contain a significant amount of multimedia content, including the Alumni Association Motion Picture Films and Videotapes (FV 017), Intercollegiate Athletics Moving Images (FV 031), News and Communications Services Motion Picture Films (FV 057), and KEZI Sports Videotapes (FV 329). The Oregon State University Sesquicentennial Oral History Collection (OH 026) also contains numerous interviews from OSU's sporting past.
Preferred Citation: Josh Worden Interviews on Oregon State University Athletics (MSS Worden), Oregon State University Special Collections and Archives Research Center, Corvallis, Oregon.
Processing Information:
We acknowledge that materials in SCARC collections and the language that describes them may be harmful. We are actively working to address our descriptive practices; for more information please see our SCARC Anti-Racist Actions Statement online.
The archivist-prepared description of this collection uses the phrase “Civil War” to refer to the long-standing athletic rivalry between Oregon State University and the University of Oregon. A history of this athletic rivalry, and use of the phrase “Civil War” to describe it, is available online in The Origins of the "Civil War" Football Game blog post.
In June 2020, Oregon State University President Edward J. Ray announced that the term “Civil War” will no longer be used by either university because it “represents a connection to a war fought to perpetuate slavery.”
We acknowledge the racism represented by the use of this phrase and the harm it may cause our users. In order to provide historical context and to enable standardized searching and access across our collections, we have retained the use of this phrase in the collection description.
[Date of acknowledgement: November 2021]
Worden, Josh
Baseball--Oregon--Corvallis.
Baseball players--Oregon--Corvallis.
Basketball--Oregon--Corvallis.
Basketball for women--Oregon--Corvallis.
Basketball players--Oregon--Corvallis.
Casey, Pat
COVID-19 (Disease)
COVID-19 Pandemic, 2020-
Cross-country running--Oregon--Corvallis.
Football--Oregon--Corvallis.
Football coaches--Oregon--Corvallis.
Football players--Oregon--Corvallis.
Fosbury, Dick.
Golf--Oregon--Corvallis.
Golf for women--Oregon--Corvallis.
Gymnastics for women--Oregon--Corvallis.
Olympic athletes
Oregon--Race relations.
Oregon State University. Athletics.
Radio broadcasters.
Soccer--Oregon--Corvallis.
Softball for women--Oregon--Corvallis.
Swimming for women--Oregon--Corvallis.
Tennis--Oregon--Corvallis.
Track and field athletes--Oregon--Corvallis.
University History
Volleyball for women--Oregon--Corvallis.
Women athletes--Oregon--Corvallis.
Born digital.
Digital audio formats.