I don't know how many of our readers have met me, and I wanted to explain how I plan to approach our sports coverage. I met hundreds of students, teachers, administrators, parents and other members of the community in my first five years at The Sentinel-Record writing mainly about education. I hope to have a similar experience returning to sports.
Hot Springs is the closest thing I have to a hometown. I was born in Arkadelphia when my parents were both earning their master's degrees from Henderson State University. We first moved several years later, and I've had a lot of stops in between. My last job was as a sports editor in Iowa, and everyone always asked me where I was from. I said I claimed the entire state of Arkansas because of the number of places I lived.
We lived in Baton Rouge, La., after Arkadelphia, and I lived in College Station, Texas, for a short time. We stayed in Clarksdale, Miss., for about a year and a half, but the rest of my life has been spent in Arkansas. I lived for a year in Mountain Pine, where my mom's side of the family all went to school. I also lived in Dover, West Helena, Barton, Russellville, Clarksville, Clarendon, Forrest City and Wynne.
I attended Witts Springs when it was the smallest public K-12 school district in the country. I played basketball and baseball for Ola, Scranton and Clarendon in high school. I'm embarrassed anytime someone can stump me with the name of a small Arkansas town. I've been to most of them. I wasn't sure how well I would transition to college in Fayetteville without sports, but I got used to it.
Many of my summers and most of my holidays were spent around Mountain Pine and Hot Springs. I worked several summer jobs at Sonic in Hot Springs Village, Magic Springs and in the electronics department at the Wal-Mart store on Central Avenue. I was pretty certain at one point I met almost everyone in Garland County.
My degree is in history, and I went through the state's non-traditional licensure program to become a teacher. I was set to teach and coach, but I did not get a job immediately. I ended up writing for The Shin Guardian website in the meantime covering Major League Soccer and the U.S. Soccer teams.
I wrote several pieces to start and interviewed some players over the phone, but my first real journalism experience was an MLS playoff match in Dallas. Some of you may know of players like Brek Shea, David Ferreira and Dax McCarty. I met them in person more than seven years ago. The Shin Guardian allowed me to interview numerous soccer figures and cover MLS and U.S. national team matches over the next several years. Soccer by Ives and The Yanks Are Coming also allowed me to write for their sites.
My experience covering soccer helped me obtain my first newspaper job in Marianna with the Courier-Index. I went on to cover sports and all types of news for the Wynne Progress and the East Arkansas News Leader. I moved again to cover sports full-time for the Daily Sentinel in LeMars, Iowa, and it proved to be a valuable primer for returning to Hot Springs.
The population of LeMars is about 10,000 people, and Plymouth County has about 25,000 people. The largest city in the region, Sioux City, of more than 80,000 people is about half an hour away. Plymouth County is another rare example, along with Garland County, of a community with seven different school districts. That is what I covered.
We followed the rare professional stories and covered a couple of NAIA Division II colleges in the area with local athletes, but we focused almost entirely on local high schools. We have Cutter Morning Star, Fountain Lake, Hot Springs, Jessieville, Lake Hamilton, Lakeside and Mountain Pine in Garland County. Bismarck, Centerpoint, Magnet Cove, Malvern and Mount Ida are all close by.
We have the Reddies of Henderson, the Tigers of OBU and now a budding sports program with the Nighthawks of NPC. I am thankful we still have the luxury of Bob Wisener's expertise for our coverage of Oaklawn Park. High school sports, college sports and horse racing is plenty to keep us busy throughout the year.
I know community sports, as do our sports writers James Leigh and Zach Parker. I look forward to any feedback or tips you can give me about sports in our area. Please hit me up with any comments or information you may have at [email protected].
Sports on 11/27/2017