The first year at any newspaper is always the hardest. It’s like being a rookie reporter all over again.
Most reporters do not start in his or her hometown, so everything is new. It’s a house/apartment, new city, new restaurants, new hobbies to explore and best of all new people.
Showing up to Labette Community College Wednesday for an Allen basketball game, I felt that joyful exhilaration every reporter feels when he or she arrives to do a story and knows exactly how to handle the situation. It was that moment I realized I’ve been with the Iola Register for more than a year.
No more rookie seasons. I’ve seen everything as far as the annually scheduled activities and I know what to expect. I know which teams keep stats available, and which teams do not. I know which coaches are good for a quote right out of the gate, and which ones need a bit of warming up before they get comfortable. Best of all, I know the teams, most of the area athletes and the general direction they’re all trying to go.
This past year, covering six high school teams and a college has been an undertaking. I’ve driven to the wrong cities. I’ve called kids by the wrong names — sorry Grady. I’ve had about the rookiest rookie year a journalist can have, but here we are and a lot of that is due to patience, sympathy and understanding from the community.
Here’s an example. Recently resigned Iola baseball coach Levi Ashmore helped popularize our video postgame interviews. I remember the first time I asked about it, and it caught fire. Now it’s sponsored. As a writer, my microphone skills are not the best, but area athletes and coaches are patient with me in interviews. I edit out most of my verbal bumbling before it gets posted on our Facebook page and YouTube channel.
It’s nice to have a relative idea of what I’m doing on a given night, but relative is the key word in that statement. Every contest has millions of variables. The craziest part is realizing there is no guiding hand. It’s all chaos. I might know the teams, the players and even the best place to shoot at dusk, but the forecasted result is not always the result.
Covering sports never gets old, even when covering the same teams, and hopefully it stays that way. After covering sports at the Register for a year, I predict I’ll never feel complacent.
