Favorite assignment

Two spring to mind:

1. When covering the high school state basketball tournament one year, I had four teams in my coverage area get to state and each of the teams had players who were siblings, and others who had siblings who previously played on state hoops teams. Turned out to be even better than I thought, because the school that sent its boys and girls teams to state had more family relations than I realized -- it seemed half the kids were brothers, sisters or cousins. On top of that, all four teams I covered reached the state title game, so it turned into one of the best sports packages I ever did.

2. We got a news tip from a reader outside our area about Arian Foster. The reader mentioned that Arian's mother grew up in one of the communities we covered and Arian still had relatives living in the area. Talked to those relatives first, then Arian's mother, and they were all gracious. Arian's mother gave me her son's cell number, and when I called him, I could tell he was surprised at first that somebody from Podunk would call him. But after I explained things to him, he was very gracious and I got some great quotes from the guy.

 

Kind of an assignment. Goes all the way back to my first reporting gig at my hometown weekly. Reporters used to take turns bringing police scanner home. My dad would get mad when I didn't so I started keeping it with me all the time. It was a small town and he knew every name that came across it. Whenever there was a fire call he and I would jump into the car and chase the fire truck. Got some great photos. Eventually just got him his own for Christmas. He's not around anymore.

 

I've had a couple. As a lifelong NASCAR fan, when Kevin Harvick came to our town to appear at an Ollie's opening, getting to interview him was a highlight. I also spent a couple of days with a late model race team from nearby -- one at the shop, one at the track -- for an enterprise piece I was pretty proud of. Getting to go hang out at the race track and write about it was definitely a highlight.

Probably the other story that was the most fun was breaking a story when I was with my college newspaper. My college (East Carolina) was apparently not going to have its stadium updated on the latest NCAA Football game. I contacted EA Sports, and fully expected to be given the runaround since I was just a kid at a college paper. Instead, I got to talk directly with a producer who gave me the story about how the stadium would be upgraded and what exactly goes into the process. It's probably the story I'm most proud of in my career, and was a large part of why I got my first job out of college.

 

Neat story. Thanks for sharing.

 

Those are always fun. Back when Michigan had girls hoops in the fall, I covered a school where the football team and girls basketball team won state titles eight days apart. There were three sets of siblings, including the family who had the wide receiver who caught a touchdown and the shooting guard who went off for 30.