When you are a fledgling journalist, you don’t get many chances like these.
I knew this three months ago, walking into Ford Field in Detroit, Mich., for the fourth time in two years. All three previous trips were for CMU football games as a beat writer, including two Motor City Bowls. This trip was similar in one sense. I carried a press pass and a bag of a journalist’s favorite tools (camera, notepad, voice recorder and pen, among other things), fully dressed with a tie on, like I did before, as I walked through security into the stadium.
While Ford Field mostly is known for hosting Detroit Lions games, the Mid-American Conference Championship game and the Motor City Bowl, this was April – well outside football season. Ford Field instead was gearing up for Final Four basketball. It was Friday, practice day for the four teams, all open to the public, and the main floor, normally carpeted with turf, was overlaid with chairs, press tables and – you guessed it – a basketball court. (See above.)
My purpose at this event was simple: To write a scholarship story. I was e-mailed two weeks earlier by Tom Stanton, an assistant journalism professor at the University of Detroit Mercy, with an invitation to attend a United States Basketball Writers’ Association (USBWA) seminar with some of the top basketball writers in the country. This included a chance to be assigned to one event during the Final Four weekend and to write a story in a $1,000 scholarship competition.
The previous day’s workshop was a blast. I went with a couple of my coworkers at Central Michigan Life to the University of Detroit Mercy, where we got to meet sports journalists such as Boston Globe writer Bob Ryan, Washington Post columnist John Feinstein, Dana O’Neil of ESPN.com and Steve Carp of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. All of them were extremely nice in providing sportswriting tips and answering questions for about 100-150 students in attendance.
The following day, I found myself at Ford Field working alongside some of these writers. It was like I was living a career dream. That was enough motivation to get to work.
(NOTE: In between all of this, I managed to shoot photos and take audio to create a nice, quick Soundslides presentation on a 3-on-3 U.S. wheelchair basketball game. You can view it here.)
First, I had to come up with a storyline. What was I going to write about? At first, I wanted to deviate from doing a story on Michigan State because of its predictability. I wanted to uncover something deeper. But there was a particular moment right before the Spartans began their practice (teams practiced in 50-minute allotments and MSU was first) which shined for me.
I was standing courtside, next to MSU’s entrance ramp, when the team began its march into the Ford Field lights. The crowd absolutely roared. A good 20,000 people, 95 percent of which were State fans, where cheering during the introduction. The band was playing, the jumbotron was going and the cheerleaders were jumping. It was quite a sight – for a practice!
I immediately had a lede in mind, wrote it down and went the entire 50-minute practice from there, recording everything I heard and saw. I also got a chance to play photographer for 10 minutes, sitting courtside and getting nice shots of players running their drills. Now all I needed to do was get player reactions to the rather unusual practice atmosphere.
As I walked toward the locker rooms, I caught sight of John Feinstein. I talked with him briefly the day earlier about my sportswriting experiences, particularly as CMU’s football writer. I walked up to him to say hi and if he had any words of wisdom for my interviews. I gave him the early idea for my story.
“Talk to the little guys,” he said. “Don’t talk to any star players. Get the guys no one is talking to.”
Perfect advice.
While everybody and their mother is hearing about Kalin Lucas and Goran Suton and their thoughts on the Final Four trip home, there are other players on the team who, for one, wouldn’t mind some media attention. They’re in the tournament semifinals just like Lucas and Suton. And they can be a quote gold mine if you give them the time to talk.
I memorized several player numbers while waiting outside the locker room, writing down interview possibilities. When the media poured in, I stood back for a minute or two to let everyone settle in.
Once I walked in, I looked for players sitting down, talking either to one media member or none at all. I started with center Idong Ibok. Then Austin Thornton. Then Korie Lucious. None of these players averaged more than 10 minutes per game, and all of them had quite a bit to say about their early experience.
“We’ve had many games with less people than that … it was unbelievable,” Ibok said. Golden.
“I kept catching myself looking up at the stands and thinking, ‘Wow, we are at a practice right now, and we have, like, 15,000 people here watching us,’” Thornton said. Even more golden.
Once interviews were done, I put away my voice recorder and notepad and headed back to courtside to catch Connecticut practice. Like I said in this entry’s intro, you don’t get many chances like these. I had an opportunity to watch great college basketball teams practice!
I also went to the Final Four media room (pictured below) to find other familiar faces. I found Bob Ryan writing a story, so I dropped by to talk to him for a few minutes. I was gracious of his time because Globe writers, especially those as renowned as Ryan, surely are busy people. I made sure to grab a bite to eat, too – within all the Final Four hoopla, I forgot my stomach was growling.
I went down to courtside, once more, to watch the final practice: The eventual Final Four champion North Carolina, complete with Tyler Hansbrough, Ty Lawson and coach Roy Williams. It was another one of those moments where I fell in love with what I did for a living. I could get used to this for a long, long time, I thought. It reminded me of when I began covering CMU football.
I left about 10 minutes early to beat traffic and make my way to Columbus, Ohio, where the Society of Professional Journalists Region 4 conference was held. Following that small trip, I sat down at my desk in Mount Pleasant, Mich., surrounded by media guides and releases, and began writing my story.
I treated it like anything I would write for a professional publication. I fact-checked, proofread, verified and clarified every sentence I wrote. I re-read my story at least 50 times. Once I was done, I handed it to a few of my colleagues and my adviser for proofreading. They gave me minor things to fix and clean up.
In the end, here was what I came up with.
A couple weeks passed. I didn’t think too much about the scholarship. There were at least several dozen other college and high school writers in the competition. While my chances were low, I had an amazing experience nonetheless.
I was in the Life office on a Sunday, working on adding widgets to the Life Web site, when I received another e-mail from Tom Stanton.
“It was a tough decision — with many strong entries — but the judges have selected a winner in the Final Four sportswriting scholarship competition: Brian Manzullo of Central Michigan University.
Posted by Brian Manzullo at July 20, 2009
Reporting, Sports