“White Night, Blue Day, Green Evening”
Where the road runs down by the Butternut Grove to old Bill Skinner’s stream
Do tell at the noonday bell it’s a time for summertime dream
— “Summertime Dream” — Gordon Lightfoot, 1976
Well, maybe not a summertime dream, but spring in New Jersey is close enough. And going just over the Delaware River on I-80 puts you right into the southern Poconos, beautiful in spring but also all year. And on one cloudy day two years ago, East Stroudsburg, Monroe County was the setting for another fantastic PSAC lacrosse match, where the hometown Warriors were ready to pull a fast one on 10th-ranked Mercyhurst. I was more ready than ever to see the girls get a win just 90 minutes from home, but those that had filled the small bleachers expecting another convincing win from the visitors were stunned to find the score 14–5 with just 18½ minutes to play. I couldn’t believe what was transpiring before me, for I now had to figure out the last time such a victory had occurred. What problems, I asked two days later, could the #10 team in the country have when it’s outscoring its opponents by more than 4.5 goals per contest, winning all four of its major defensive metrics, and have three players on pace to nearly replicate Rebecca Himes’ 2014 and 2015 campaigns?
I failed to receive a response, and I don’t mind it at all, because we at the Merciad ask such rhetoric questions quite often. I originally knew I was going to cover sports, but I never minded writing for our other sections either, in-fact one of my first assignments was a Scorpions album review; eventually, I would be converted to a full-time sportswriter and flourish in that role, conducting analyses never seen before on the pages of our 90-year-old publication. Soccer and basketball quickly became my forte, for I vividly remember my first player interview, standing at a sunny midfield of our football pitch and realising the potential future ahead of me. Later that morning, my first interview came with star Irish forward Jack Watson, whom unfortunately tore his ACL before I had a chance to cover his team. Still, we all continued forward, even when it came around to covering the aftereffects of his demise at the beginning of October, the field hockey squad crashing out of the PSAC race at month’s-end, and then moving on to the exciting playoff races for basketball and ice hockey. Somehow, I lacked a conflict of interest covering my friends, it only made my articles that more meaningful that the subjects knew their journalist personally and vice-versa. Yet at times, there I stood interviewing a gracious opponent after a Laker defeat, a more controversial take despite attempting to remain unbiased at a college newspaper; in-fact, it wouldn’t be until my third assignment that I interviewed a Laker since the soccer boys were upset in their first two contests. The subject was a field-hockey girl that I was about to befriend, somehow, she didn’t mind and recognised I had a job to do.
Within five months, I had spent countless Sunday nights writing stories like a factory worker, with my first true analysis piece, a few individual game recaps — a challenge for a weekly, and an editorial already in my portfolio, albeit controversial regarding an ice-hockey student section that managed to draw the attention of the National Association for Mental Illness. But we got over ourselves over the summer, and by the end of my second year, I had won our inaugural Sports Reporter award, a main tenant of which included opponent interviews. But back at Whitenight Field in East Stroudsburg, goaltender Tatyana Petteway was my subject as a grey cloud-cover began to form over the Poconos. She had just made 22 saves in that 16–10 upset in a game that I swear had them ranked, but it just so happened that as I found her within a conglomerate of her teammates, a caravan of young women clad in forest-green was walking past and somehow noticed me but appeared slightly offended. It was my second road assignment in just three months after covering basketball in Edinboro, also a Laker defeat, but it appeared as if this day was different since it was an entire squadron of players that must have been interpreting this interview as some kind of betrayal when all I’m trying to do is write a non-biased article. All the sure signs of a Laker victory were there, but not today after Petteway stood on her head in front of her home fans; and interviewing her, when she played so marvelously, is somehow offensive?
Still, my perseverance did not waver. At the end of the day, it is my duty as a reporter to be unbiased, and nothing will ever allow me to sacrifice that principle. Perhaps now I must close out my prolific career and allow the torch to be passed to a new generation of reporters, for it is theirs to hold high.
