I accepted this job having never stepped foot in Brookings, but I think I know what I’m getting myself into by joining this city and the Register. Let me tell you what you’re getting in a sports editor.
This is hardly my first time in the state. I ran at Nike Cross Regionals in Sioux Falls multiple years as a high schooler and have made many trips to and through Badlands National Park. Being a sports reporter has been my lifelong dream and I’m excited to do so with one of my coverage focuses being a program (South Dakota State) that I’m familiar with as a massive sports fan from a border state.
I grew up in Omaha watching Husker sports — including football games against SDSU in 2010 and 2013 — before attending the University of Nebraska and majoring in both sports media and communication and advertising and public relations.
My journalism career really began at the student newspaper, the Daily Nebraskan, as a sophomore. I then fulfilled a semester-long sports reporting fellowship with the Omaha World-Herald during the fall of my junior year before returning to the Daily Nebraskan to be the senior sports editor.
During that time, I fully dove into the hectic daily coverage of a blue blood college football program in a region with no professional teams to take attention away from its major college, a situation not unlike SDSU’s.
I spent two years on the Nebraska football beat, covering the chaos of Scott Frost’s expulsion and Matt Rhule’s introduction. I covered Nebraska men’s basketball as well for three seasons.
I then spent two years in Interior Alaska as a sports reporter for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner.
I continued covering football and basketball there but I also wrote about a dozen other sports. Highlights included covering the Midnight Sun Game (a summer solstice baseball game that starts at 10 p.m. and is played without artificial light), the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ NCAA Division I hockey program and the Iditarod.
I was eager to move back to the Midwest and pursue a role covering an NCAA Division I program. This particular position stood out to me as fitting those standards and was similar to my role in Fairbanks in terms of balancing high school and college sports coverage.
I’ve also spent the past three years working as an editor for The Stride Report, the preeminent college track and field/cross country website, so I am well aware of South Dakota State’s regional dominance (10 straight Summit League men’s cross country titles).
My written work spans everything from enterprise stories, like features and profiles, to game coverage, previews, listicles, columns, notes and recruiting profiles, and I plan to bring a similar mix of content to Brookings. I worked hard to build relationships and connections with the coaches and athletes I covered in Fairbanks, as well as with the community and readers, and I look forward to doing the same in Brookings.
In the meantime, you can reach me at [email protected] with any story tips.
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