Life has a way of telling a person to slow down.
It’s been an incredibly busy couple months of newsing at the newspaper.
With state tournaments, and subsection sports and winter seasons coming to an end just as the spring begins, I’m reminded that there’s a lot of news worth writing about at NRHEG.
This week was, for me, a little slower due to the large amount of writing I had on my plate last week. I do all of the advertising sales at the paper as we have been unable to find another sales representative since Linda Shell passed away. On weeks I write 10,000 or 15,000 words in stories, I don’t really find any time or energy for ad calls. It is an important part of the job I got back to today. Sometimes I feel like I’m neglecting other aspects of the job by doing ad sales because I could be spending that time working on stories. But I remember that the newspaper costs money to print and without local advertisers we can’t do that. Also, without someone to call local advertisers, it’s hard for them to support us. I guess you could call that part of my job the “job/work” part.
Back to the news.
Tristan, Melanie, and Deb brought you the news this week.
Tristan wrote about Aaron Phillips. I’ve interacted with him, and his son, Andrew, through the baseball team. Aaron is really, really proud of his son, Andrew. From my vantage he’s done a great job raising a well mannered young man. He represents “Panther Pride'' well.
Speaking of sports, Thursday was media day. I took all of the NRHEG sports photos and interviewed all of the coaches. I really enjoy those conversations.
I surprise myself every time I manage to come up with new questions. The coaches this year were all “repeats” of last year, so there’s a lot of rapport there. I like that.
Duey Ferber, the track coach, is married to Amy, who was my favorite daycare lady. He was also one of my favorite teachers in middle school.
Wendy Schultz is the wife of John Schultz and, well, if you read the paper, then you know how highly I think of the whole Schultz family. Wendy is no exception. All the players laughed when I made Wendy and her daughter pose for a picture. “Every time,” Sidney said.
But that didn’t stop me.
I had to make sure to ask more questions than just about coaching for the final year, as this will be Wendy’s last, her 25th year coaching. This is also the last time the Schultz family will have a kid going through NRHEG athletics. Emotional times.
Oh, and the softball team doesn’t really know who their starting pitcher/s will be. So, of course, I asked about that. You can read that article next week if you want to hear Wendy’s answer.
I picked up golf as a hobby last summer, so I was excited to talk to Brad Root about coaching. We talked longer this year than any year we’ve ever written about golf.
And finally, my favorite: baseball.
I try to limit my sporting interviews to about 5 minutes because after that it’s just too much. I could have talked to Mark Lee for hours. This year’s squad looks really, really good.
Sometimes I wonder if we write too much about sports, but then I remember, my dad and I are the only writers doing sports. No one else touches our sports page and it is just that, the sports page.
Ahh, my hands are recovering from their soreness, but the pain and discomfort are still there when I use them, so I’m typing slower, and less. Like I said, life tells you when to slow down.