Steven McGrain, Sports Writer
The best artistic demonstration is sports writing. The opportunity to express the progression of a game is an art that some consider lost.
Athletic events can be covered in a variety of ways, whether it is through television, radio, social media or print.
Print is a lost aspect of sports media. It’s not a popular outlet anymore because the game had been over for hours before the article is published.
But, why shouldn’t print be the most popular form of capturing moments of a game or press conference? Television gives you a visual, radio is convenient when a television is not accessible and social media is the quickest form but not necessarily the most trustworthy. With print, the writer can fully digest the game and pin point a certain progression that was a deciding factor.
When a team wins a championship, they certainly do not hold up a cell phone to show a tweet saying, “the Patriots have won the Super Bowl.” They hold up a newspaper with a massive caption and a picture. Yes, call me old fashioned, but if none of those players could screen shot these moments and frame them, the phone would become idle and the picture would be useless.
The writers that inspire me are ones who can explain why an offensive lineman has inside out responsibilities on a pass play, in a way that a novice sports fan can understand. Instead, many sports media writers rattle off “spider 2-y-banana,” a football play only understood by the football savvy. To me this can turn people away as opposed to grab their attention.
I aspire to become a sports writer so that a greater audience can appreciate an athletic event. To be able to actually reflect on why a certain play happened, so that if a player made an exceptional play, his mom can hang up it on the refrigerator.To have inside information on a team making their way through March Madness and telling the story to the country has been a dream of mine since the fifth grade.
No matter what profession someone is aspiring to be, we all have an opportunity to create our own masterpiece within this career choice. Mine, hopefully, will be placed on a high school senior’s refrigerator because he made the game winning play and that hard copy can last a lifetime.
