From the moment St. Louis Blues fans walk into the doors of the Scottrade Center until the minute they leave, Lamont Buford makes sure they’re entertained.
Buford, the director of game presentation and amateur hockey for the Blues, has varied responsibilities, including coordinating the music and videos at every game.
“During the regular season, it’s just basically implementing those plans that you put together during the summer time as well as coming up with some new ideas,” Buford said.
For this aspect of his job, Buford has the opportunity to do what many Blues fans dream of: being around professional hockey players. He says he has plenty of opportunities to interact with the players, especially at the start of the regular season. And he finds the athletes cooperative and easy to work with, he said.
“At the beginning of the year we are trying to film them and get them ready for their headshots and any video features that we do,” he said. “We try to make sure that we have a good relationship with the players.”
Ultimately, however, he works to please the fans. In terms of game presentation, he likes seeing fans react to what he does, especially when he feels he is giving people a break from the hardships in their everyday lives.
“The crowd influences just about everything that goes on in a game,” Buford said. “The players feed off the crowd, and so do we.”
In his capacity of director of amateur hockey for the Blues, he organizes a variety of youth programs.
“For the amateur hockey, I handle coordinating all of our youth hockey initiatives,” Buford said. “That includes our youth hockey camps, our rink partnership programs.”
Before the NHL season rolls around in January, Buford works mostly on the youth hockey side of his job.
“I enjoy being able to work with the youth hockey community; it’s just a great community to work with,” he said.
Buford also blogs about youth hockey on the Blues website, blues.nhl.com. “Ice hockey, like every top-level sport, requires big commitment from both parents and players,” he wrote in a recent post.
Buford works in the organization’s marketing department. Despite the fact that he is one of the few African Americans in the Blues’ administration, he said the organization has its share of geographic diversity.
“There’s so many different countries represented,” he said. “We have guys who are from Russia, from Czechoslovakia, Canada; we also have guys from the U.S.”
The Blues has African-American representation at the top as well. David Steward, founder and chairman of World Wide Technology, is part of the new ownership group that kept the Blues in St. Louis.
Buford was not initially a hockey fan. He played football, basketball and track growing up. In fact, he did not become interested in hockey until after college, when he spent over six years working for the Hershey Bears, an American Hockey League team, before getting this opportunity in St. Louis.
Working with the Blues, Buford gets to be around the sport he has fallen in love being played on its biggest stage.
“I love to see the win and the reaction of the fans and the players. I like to see when they score goals,” he said. “Of course, everybody would love to win every game, but you also like to see how players handle adversity as well.”
What advice does he have for someone who aspires to work in a similar position?
“If someone is really interested in being in this field,” he said, “you have to be very creative, have a wild imagination and be prepared to work extremely hard.”
