For anyone who loves small town living and sports, I can’t think of any better job than the one we’re hiring for right now – the sports reporter.
What could be better for a sports junkie, who also appreciates living in a small town, than getting to go to all the games, getting to talk strategy with the coaches, getting up close to the action, getting to know the athletes, and getting behind the scenes access? Doing all that, and getting paid for it.
In a teaching resource for student sports reporters produced by the Washington Post, they introduce the profession as follows.
“Sports reporters and columnists capture the challenge and rivalry, the business and promotion, the ethics and sportsmanship of teams and individuals. They cover all teams, through the seasons, during the “building years” and the victories and championships. They face illnesses, tragic accidents and share the courage of athletes as they overcome obstacles. They observe, interview, record and analyze the statistics — and write on deadline.”
Now, I’ve never really been much of a sports guy, personally. All my life I’ve faced physical challenges that held me back from being an achiever at sports. And if I couldn’t be an achiever at something, I’ve never been very much interested in being involved in it. That’s just sort of how I’ve always been.
But still, I get the appeal of being a local sports reporter. In a small town, sports can be the heartbeat of the community. Something that brings the community together, that brings us closer together in our small towns, that are part of a united nation that is constantly under the strain of those trying to tear us apart.
And the local sports reporter gets to witness triumphs, and tragedies, and gets the awesome responsibility of relating what they saw. And as they peer through their viewfinder trying to capture the moments of striving, and straining for all time to come, or sit at their keyboards putting it into words in a way that the reader can relive the experience, the sports journalist gets to be the one whose eyes everyone who wasn’t there, sees it through. How the community remembers it, is how they reported it.
But do you know what else is amazing? These days, we can all be sports reporters, at least a little bit. It’s the next best thing to being a sports reporter, and it’s called being a sports correspondent. It sounds fancier than it is. Really a correspondent is just anyone who happens to take a good picture of things, and sends it in – with a good description of who’s in the photo, and what’s happening. Or anyone who feels like writing up a report on a game they saw. Don’t worry if the writing is a little rough, that’s called a rough draft, and it’s what we editors are for.
While we’re between sports reporters, we sure could use some correspondents pitching in. Yes, I mean you! So send your sports photos and reports to sports@eaglegroveeagle.com. And if being a sports reporter in a small town is the dream job you’ve always been looking for, well, we just might be looking for you.
