Six months today.
Six months of mocking ATM, of spats with Sultan, of major brouhahas with South Whidbey. And don’t even get me started on the carpet baggers who sold the Examiner to the robber barons from Canada.
Six months of joyous highs and rough lows. Six months of epic wins and tortuous losses. Six months of returning to covering events live and in-person again, and remembering just how hard the bleachers are, and how frickin’ cold and windy an open-air football stadium can be in November.
Six months of writing whatever I feel like, running ten billion photos and (mostly) staying one step ahead of the authorities.
Whether you think I’m a force for good (shining spotlights on middle school and JV players) or a P.T. Barnum of the internet age, ranting and raving and mixing gossip, smack talk and too many exclamation points, one thing’s for sure. I’m not going anywhere anytime soon.
Someone out there is reading me. 75,000 page views (and a delightful collection of hate mail from the crayon scrawlers in Sultan) doesn’t lie.
Where is this all going? That’s a good question.
It’s a bit of a high-wire act. Push the local school administrations too far, and they might cut off my access. But, the time of reporting, three days later, in clinical, stale prose, doesn’t interest me anymore.
If I’ve learned anything in these six months, it’s this — I don’t know anything.
Stories I thought would be big sometimes thudded. Stories I thought of as an afterthought sometimes shot upwards, with the page view meter clicking away.
You never know.
The question I get asked most (well, after “Did you hit your head?”) is, “What are the most read stories in the history of the site?”
At this moment, out of 625 articles, the top 10 are:
1) “URGENT: Local fisherman missing, help needed!!”
2) “Sad end to hunt for local fisherman”
3) “EXCLUSIVE: South Whidbey’s best player walks, talks!!”
4) “Faith guides Brett Arnold through hard times”
5) “Keep fighting with the grace that you always have!!”
6) “Farm Dog — forever a friend of the world!!”
7) “This is our Island!!”
8) “South Whidbey 30, Refs 26, Wolves 45!!”
9) “Fleming, Arnold go bonkers in close loss!!”
10) “Wolf receiver juggles dirty diapers, big pass plays!!”
And the least read of all-time? I’m not gonna tell you the answer to that one. Wouldn’t be fair to the person involved.
I can tell you that Coupeville High School senior Caleb “The Page Hit King” Valko has appeared in an astonishing 104 articles, followed by Bessie Walstad (93), Nick Streubel (86) and Breeanna Messner (75). I refuse to tally up everyone’s totals, but watch out for Wolf sophomores Madeline Strasburg, Kacie Kiel and McKayla Bailey — they’re coming for Valko.
And that points to the biggest change in my sports-writing over the past six months.
After years of working as a virtually non-paid freelancer for the Examiner, I am now a virtually non-paid blogger who actually cares again.
You can’t watch these kids in person, game in and game out, and not care. Am I an impartial journalist? Not anymore.
I actually punched my notebook after one play during a game this season, and got an arched eyebrow from my high school journalism teacher (and News-Times sports editor) Jim Waller.
And I’m fine with that.
Before I started coupevillesports.com, I knew Valko as a name that popped up in football, basketball and track stories. Now I know that he’s a complex dude, an onion with many layers.
He may put on a too-cool-for-school persona at times, but he’s actually a sensitive, caring guy who loves his mama, bleeds for his teammates and gets excited about free cupcakes.
Without doing this blog, I would never have known that Jared Helmstadter was just two pounds when he was born prematurely (he’s 6-foot now), that Messner is hilarious when she’s gassed after wisdom tooth surgery, that Kole Kellison actually has a dry sense of humor, why Bailey is called Turtle Shell and a million other little things that form a grand mosaic of Coupeville and its athletes.
But now I know, and knowing is half the battle.
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