And so my first year comes to a close. A year of covering football and basketball and baseball, track and tennis, softball and volleyball and wrestling. A year of bowling and rodeos and the occasional story about quidditch, disc golf or fishing. I came to McAlester already a decent writer, but I had no idea [...]

The 2012 Jr. Sunbelt Classic was just about over when I drove into McAlester a year ago. The 2013 Jr. Sunbelt Classic ends Wednesday night, and my second official year as a sports journalist starts one week from today. Man, how the time flies. Here, then, is everything I wrote in the penultimate week of [...]

I’m on vacation this week, so no long intro. Here are the final articles I wrote before heading home for some much-needed R&R: Eufaula Classic crossed the line McAlester United wraps season Six Buffs named All-District Eagle Hill “Fun Day” set for June 1 Buffs and Lady Buffs organize donations Buffs prepare for summer football [...]

This has been one of the stranger weekends I’ve faced since moving out to McAlester. It started Saturday night, when I watched a football game get so out of hand the referees ran away and the game had ended midway through the third quarter and without a winner. The strangeness continued Sunday, when the weather [...]

And so it ends. McAlester’s track and tennis teams finished their respective state competitions Saturday, marking the end of the 2012-13 high school sports year. I’m sure I’ll write a few more stories on high school athletes throughout the summer, but the routine I developed throughout the year to stay on top of 12 schools’ [...]

Between a furlough and a baseball doubleheader in Claremore, this might seem like a shorter roundup than normal. As the high school season finally ends — although actually it went by surprisingly fast — I anticipate a change in coverage strategies. Twice this past week I traded one story of 750 or 800 words for [...]

Apparently I forgot to publish last week, so this one is gonna be extra-long. One of the stories below might put me in some hot water come Wednesday morning. But I figure if I’m gonna get readers mad at me, it should be over an issue I feel strongly about, and not, say, a dumb [...]

One of the lesser reasons I chose sports as my journalistic focus was so that hopefully I’d never have to cover something truly horrifying. Journalists always have to be objective, and often even dispassionate, but I never wanted to have to truly sacrifice my emotions to cover something that would otherwise upset me. As the [...]

I got all of my work done early enough in the day so that I could cover McAlester’s noon game of a home doubleheader, which it won, 20-0. But after that, I had a choice: I could cover what would probably be another uninteresting Buffs blowout, or I could hit the road to appease a [...]

OK people, it’s 2013. Why haven’t we figured out how to control the weather yet? It’s hard enough trying to stay on top of 12 schools’ worth of teams. But figuring out what’s been rained out and what hasn’t, especially on the weekend? Now it’s just ridiculous. With my mini-rant now finished, here’s what I [...]