Last week I had the opportunity to talk with Jim Wilson, the Assistant Sports Editor of the Worcester Telegram & Gazette during one of my classes. An all-around good guy, one specific word still resonates in my mind that he told the class: Passion. I absolutely love what he told the class, saying "If you want to be a sports writer, you have to love it. Enjoy what you write, and everything is worth the sacrifice. You have to earn it."
His words could not be any more true. There is no great opportunity in the business. A writer has to work all hours of the day, grind out everyday, just to get up four hours later and do it all again. Oh, and it doesn't pay well either.
But there is something that makes people want to do it and take on the insane workload: passion. I am willing to say that I love sports more than anybody else I know, and I don't love them just because I played them, I love them for the experience. I love the stories, the analysis, the ups and downs of when you team wins and loses, and I love complaining about every decision my team makes, good or bad. I love the atmosphere, the stress during games when a team is two points down with 30 seconds to go. There is just something about sports that has me like a third grader staring at her hollywood crush. I see this same thing in Mr. Wilson.
Mr. Wilson also told us a story about him and growing up with sports. As a child, he would play neighborhood pickup baseball games. When they concluded, he would go home and write down all the statistics of the kids. He always read the sports page growing up, and he would write his own game recaps. I found myself doing the same things as a child, and even to this day I track the vital statistics of baseball players in notebooks that fill the closets of my room.
He also shared with the class that he loves to cover stories that have resonance. He wants to write a story that people will remember, not just last night's game's recap. He shared one of his first stories with us that was about the basketball coach at WPI who said the referees where racist. He loved the aspect that this story would catch fire and everybody would talk about it. Just hearing the story brought goosebumps to my skin.
Overall, I enjoyed his time not just because he talked about sports, but he showed me why I want to be in sports. I still struggle to this day whether it is right for me or not, but I know for a fact that I don't want to do anything else but devote my life to sports.
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