Sports
I began my time with ODYSSEY Media Group as a Sports Staffer, where I learned how to work with athletes and coaches and craft compelling sports stories. As Sports Editor, I expanded my coverage across multiple sports while taking on deeper, sometimes controversial topics that examine sports beyond the scoreboard. This section reflects both my growth as a sports journalist and my commitment to thoughtful, impactful coverage.
Game coverages
This game coverage highlights one of our schools varsity flag football games and marks the first game I ever covered independently. Although I was unfamiliar with the sport at the time, I relied on close observation and note-taking to produce a complete and accurate story. While the coverage isn’t as data-rich as my current work, it still demonstrates strong reporting fundamentals and attention to detail. Looking back, this experience laid the foundation for the comprehensive and statistics-driven game coverage I produce today.
This soccer game coverage I wrote during my freshman year, was the second game I reported independently and allowed me to build on prior experience. Soccer being a familiar sport gave me more confidence going in, and I was able to efficiently gather information from a wide range of sources. This preparation allowed me to produce the story quickly while maintaining accuracy and clarity.
This game coverage of the varsity flag football team came nearly a year after my first experience covering the sport, allowing me to approach the story with much more confidence. Having prior experience, I was able to focus on gathering detailed factual data from the game rather than relying on general observations. The resulting story is more precise, data-driven and engaging for readers.
This Signing Day coverage was the first sports story I wrote after becoming Sports Editor and remains one of my favorite pieces to date. I approached the story with a unique angle, allowing it to stand out from typical event coverage. The combination of thoughtful reporting, strong storytelling and careful organization made the piece engaging and memorable. Looking back, this story represents an early milestone in my career and highlights my growth as a sports journalist.
This coverage of the football team’s rivalry game was a challenging project that I co-wrote with a staffer but took leadership on. The game itself was complex, and my limited prior knowledge of football made reporting more difficult. The process involved multiple rewrites, extensive fact-checking and gathering additional interviews, which delayed publication but strengthened the final story. While it was a tough experience, it was highly educational and provided valuable lessons.
Previews: Another type of sports writing I did a lot of was previewing events such as games, trips, or the overall season. What’s important about previewing is to have a specific angle to make sure the story offers something new and exciting. For example, in my Maryland story, it was about an important trip to Maryland. My season preview was about the team having a lot of returning players and faith in their excellence that season.
Miscellaneous
These are other types of stories that are random and have to do with the teams’ seasons–for example the way in which the baseball team has practice all summer long and my area change story was about how the flag football team was going to have to adapt to this new area change with harder teams.