Patrick’s ability to stay focused, patient and encouraging made her a strong and invaluable team player during college from 2006-10 — qualities she puts into use in her job as a news reporter at Springfield’s NBC affiliate KY3.
After graduation, Patrick moved to Joplin, Mo., to get her feet wet as a broadcast journalist mere months after a tornado had ravaged the community in May 2011. Instead of focusing on that devastation, she remembers the feeling of excitement and hope in Joplin.
“The community seemed so united in a positive way after the tornado,” Patrick said. “It was a progressive time for the city and a really exciting time to be covering all that in journalism.”
She moved back to Springfield in May 2013 to join the KY3 news team, where she’s discovering new facets of Ozarks life and culture. The Solon, Ohio, native loves interviewing people and sharing their stories, and she knows she has the opportunity to make a huge impact.
“This whole experience has been a blessing to me. I’ve begun volunteering in the community because I feel so blessed that I need to pay it forward,” Patrick said. “A lot of the places I volunteer I wouldn’t even know about if it weren’t for this job.”
Ask anyone who knows Patrick, and they will tell you that she has an enormous drive and boundless energy. In addition to her career ambitions and volunteer work with women’s shelters and food banks, she still plays volleyball at least three nights a week on various leagues, and she participates each year in the Missouri State alumni volleyball game against the current team.
And if you ask her, she loves every minute of it.
“Sometimes you’re under a deadline and you feel like it’s impossible, but you do it,” she said. “When you get on the news after all that scrambling, that moment is just perfect. It’s a great feeling of accomplishment — a rush — and I just love it.”
Her former coach is glad they stay in touch.
“It is always enjoyable for me, as a coach, to see student-athletes come in as freshmen and leave our campus as strong, confident young women,” Stokes said. “It is always great to see Shayla because she will always make you smile and realize how lucky we are to get to do what we do.”
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