My career as a sports journalist has been a wild one so far.
It started when I was much younger than I am now. My dad, who was a sports journalist in college much like myself and spent time with the Kansas University basketball team during his time in school, introduced me to sports mostly through a board game called Strat-O-Matic. Strat-O, as it is often called by enthusiasts, is a complicated yet entertaining sports card game. Cards represent actual professional athletes in the major sports, and with the help of dice and other cards, you can play baseball, football, basketball and hockey games. The company has expanded to include computer games as well. Check out their website here.
It sounds like a sports junkie's Dungeons and Dragons. That wouldn't be too far from the truth. But it has set me on the path I am on right now, landing me here at Elon University. My dad told me about how he would write game stories from the games he played with his cards, mostly baseball. He loved growing up playing with guys like his hero, Pittsburgh Pirates right fielder Roberto Clemente. By the time I got old enough to understand the complexities that Strat-O provides, my dad had purchased the hockey game. Two Christmases ago, I received the football game as a gift.
This is where I got my start, and I am incredibly grateful to my father for that start. Through his current job as the publisher of The Sanford Herald in my hometown of Sanford, N.C., he helped me get my first real sports journalism job: doing stats for radio broadcasts of Southern Lee High School football games during my junior year of high school. I would help with stats, then go back to The Herald and help then-Sports Editor Alex Podlogar with the sports section by writing sports briefs.
My senior year, I got to speak on the radio, doing some secondary color commentary. I must say, that was an experience. I was dreadful, though my co-workers at that job, Alex and Tim Murr, pastor at Grace Christian Church, might graciously say otherwise. I would say the dumbest and/or most obvious things. And I always stood up for the little guys: the blockers. Oh, did I love to talk about the blockers. Southern Lee, at that time, wasn't exactly the best team, so we were looking for something positive to say.
It was my first experience in sports journalism. I continued to write briefs that fall for The Herald and wrote a couple of other stories.
When I came to Elon, I wanted to get involved in The Pendulum right away, except for one caveat: I was a Cinema major. I had fallen in love with the art of film in high school as well and thought that was what I was going to do with my life.
However, I went to the interest meeting for The Pendulum and soon found myself writing blog posts about hockey. I ended up writing seven in my freshman year, mostly about the Carolina Hurricanes. In the spring, I took a job as the Sports Multimedia Editor for The Pendulum and my writing activity mostly ceased. In that time, I changed my major to print/online journalism and got the experience of a lifetime.
As a longtime Carolina Hurricanes fan, it was a privilege for me to interview (for about an hour) Tripp Tracy, the color commentator on television broadcasts for the Hurricanes. After our talk, he took me down to the locker room where I got to interview Hurricanes players Tim Gleason and Eric Staal and then-head coach Paul Maurice. I probably asked them all silly questions, but it was amazing. I still have the recordings from Tripp and the players on my voice recorder (I accidentally deleted Coach Mo's, I think). Writing that story for my Media Writing class was awesome. It was a blast to sit down and listen to the recordings thinking that I had been in an NHL locker room with real NHL players and real NHL coaches and real NHL media (I got to participate in the post-practice media scrum, but didn't ask any questions).
So now here I am, after a semester as the Assistant Sports Editor, as the man at the top of The Pendulum sports desk. It's humbling, to say the least, but I thank God for every moment that He's given me to have this great experience. Covering Elon men's basketball these past couple months has been a great education on covering a team and getting to know coaches, players, etc.
I sat down with men's basketball head coach Matt Matheny last night in Pandora's Pies before he went on the radio and asked questions, just casually. He shook my hand, asked how I was doing and answered questions the way he always does - honestly with great respect for me and for my position.
Forget all the free food and great access that media get, just having a Division I basketball coach come up to you, shake your hand, ask how you're doing. That blows me away every time.
I could do this for a living.