Impartiality, emotion often clash in sports

It didn’t take long after I arrived in July to realize that high school sports meant something here.

I had expected that to be the case. It was a huge part of what lured me out of the Chicago suburbs to take a chance on a community I knew next to nothing about. But as someone who played my high school ball at a tiny institution in an area inundated by professional sports and bigger high schools, the concept still caught me off guard.

I’m fully aware that I’m supposed to be impartial. It’s my job. But when I see half the town clapping along in the bleachers as The Force of Winchester welcomes the Black Attack to the field on a Friday or glance way up in the balcony seating to see a legion of Jay County fans roaring as their team takes the court, I can’t help but feel something.

That’s the blessing and the curse of being around people who care. Athletes who care, coaches who care and communities that genuinely back their teams. I start to care too. Not because I’m a fan of any of the nine teams in the Graphic Printing Company coverage area, but because I’m uniquely positioned to witness the ups and downs of the teams and the athletes that play for them.

It’s all well and good when you get to soak in the elation of a Randolph Southern boys basketball team that just won its first county championship in nearly 30 years. Heck, the victory meant so much to the community that even late on a frigid night, the team celebrated with a victory parade around Lynn. When I saw the smiles etched onto the faces of players, coaches and fans and got to speak to the seniors who had just delivered the title, I couldn’t help but share in their joy just a little bit.

But for every winner, there has to be a loser. On that particular night, I also had to come face-to-face with the devastation of a Winchester team that had fought tooth and nail to erase a significant halftime deficit and was unable to convert a game-winning 3-pointer as time expired.

That’s the challenging paradox of covering sports for a living. You’re asked to report without inserting your own emotion, but there’s no way you’re not going to feel it. Capturing the emotion of the players and coaches is key, and I always strive to work that into my stories. But being stoic and impartial in a scenario charged with feelings will never be easy.

Sometimes, that challenge is intensified by the fact that I know exactly what it feels like to come up short. Sure, I probably didn’t ever feel the weight of a community on my shoulders like some athletes here do. But I still put an immense amount of pressure on myself during my athletic career, and that made my brushes with failure excruciating.

I remember losing a baseball game in high school in large part because I sailed a throw on a dropped third strike, leading to a rally from the opposition. Even after the hour-and-a-half bus ride back, I was still in tears and seething with frustration in the garage when I finally arrived at home.

And there’s the difficulty of impartiality. I don’t care who wins, but I don’t want anybody to feel that type of pain that I know all too well. And the last thing I want to do when I see that pain is to ask a kid for an interview or take a picture of them in their moment of agony. I genuinely just want to give them some encouraging words or a hug.

It can be tough sometimes, but I continue to thank God that I get to be a part of the stories of these athletes and the communities that root them on. And I know the pain isn’t forever, and the callouses it creates builds up tough, resilient people. I just hope folks know that when I grab a losing coach or player for a few postgame questions, I don’t want to talk about it any more than they do.