If you told me Fall semester of freshman year that I would be medically retired from Football and reporting from the sidelines my jaw would have dropped. At that time I could not imagine a life where I wasn’t playing Football or at the very least, participating in athletics in some way shape or form. However, a year later life would present me with a series of injuries that would force me to retire from the game I love for the foreseeable future. To say that I was devastated would be an understatement. What was I going to do with my time? What was my identity outside of Football? How could I truly be happy without the sport I love? I was so lost that I decided to grow out my midlife crisis mustache at 20 years old. For several months I dealt with these existential questions until I discovered that all of my years of being an athlete were not for nothing.
After months of wallowing in self-pity, I picked myself up off of the turf on Patterson Field and walked into the office of Justin Jones and Matt Hagy to apply for a sports broadcasting job. I realized that while my love for Football is an immense one, I love talking even more. In this role, I fell in love with the process of researching and analyzing the multitude of athletic teams we have on Ursinus’ campus. I had officially found a positive outlet for my athletic knowledge and hunger for sports. Nonetheless, there was only one problem. I was only working two days a week. Bum BUM BUUUUUM!
I knew that there was more reporting I could do to satiate my hunger for sports journalism, so I immediately signed up for Dr. Taussig’s Sports Journalism class for the Fall Semester of my senior year. After the first day of class, I knew I was in the right place. The conversations were engaging, the debates were full of passion, and the subject matter was everything I had already talked about outside of class on a daily basis. Directly after, whilst I was packing up my things to leave, Dr. Taussig had informed me that The Grizzly did not have a sports editor for the 2023-2024 school year. To which I responded with: “Ok” in an agreeable manner. After a dead silence fell over the room, Dr. Taussig responds with “You will be the sports editor for The Grizzly.” And the rest is history folks. Thank you so much for being such an amazing community! It was an absolute pleasure serving the people. GO BEARS!