School/Grade: Warrenton senior 

High School Sports/Activities: Football, Basketball, STUCO, Link Crew and NHS 

Favorite Sports Team: Kansas City Chiefs and St. Louis Cardinals

Favorite Athlete: LeBron James 

Biggest Role Model: “My mom. She’s always kept me going even when I had doubts on things and helped me get through it.” 

Favorite School Subject: Journalism

How did you get involved with Youth Baseball Midwest?

“They started the program this year and reached out to schools to find interns. They had reached out to Mr. Arnette, our athletic director, and he knew to come straight to me. He got me in contact with them and we started working it out. Then, I went and had a meeting with them, figured out what we were going to do and that’s how we got started with it.” 

How long have you been interning with them?

“Probably two or three weeks before the start of the baseball season.” 

What does a typical week look like for you?

“On Mondays, we will do our live show and that covers everything. We try to cover all of the classes. We’ll cover what happened in the previous week, what’s coming up and after that, we talk about what we’re going to do for the week and what we’re going to write about. On Tuesday, I’ll figure out if I need to send emails and see what kind of information I need to find. Wednesday, I’ll wait and see and look at what games there are because I always want to try and find stats that are as recent as possible. Thursday, Friday and Saturday, I’ll work on the paper and usually get it out by Sunday.” 

What do you typically talk/write about? 

“I cover most of the GAC North. We highlight games of the week and accomplishments. We started to bring in coaches from other schools and we’ll talk to them and highlight if they have a big game coming up. With my writings, I’ll highlight a team. I’ve highlighted St. Charles and how they’re having a good year compared to the past. I’ve also covered Holt and how they’re not doing as well, but they’re having some injuries and troubles like that. Or, I’ll do a conference overview. This week, I wrote a conference overview since there’s a three way tie in conference, but also looking towards districts and that dilemma on being close in conference, but do you focus on that or districts.” 

What’s your process when preparing for the podcast?

“We usually have a script, but I’ll go in and create a document and put all my teams in there – look at whose stats are the best, look at what they did in conference that week, what games they’ve won, what’s ahead. I’ll also usually add a little something about what I like about a certain player or talking about how I think a team can win a certain matchup in the week ahead.” 

Do you choose what you write/talk about or do you get assignments?

“I look and find usually all of my own stuff and I’ll come up with my own ideas on what I’m writing about.” 

Do you have a favorite story you’ve covered?

“I like St. Charles because they’re kind of the stepchild of the GAC North and a lot of people don’t give them as much credit. Their coach, Brad Bichel, has done great things with their program and I love that I’ve gotten the chance to watch them. I love their atmosphere and chemistry, so that one was probably my favorite so far this year.” 

What has been the biggest challenge when writing for a public audience?

“Trying to voice your opinion a little bit, but not too much. Obviously, covering the GAC North I don’t want to highlight Warrenton all the time and not the other teams. So, just having your opinion but not over highlighting it. Also, staying positive and not showing too much negativity. It was hard with the Holt article because they haven’t been having a great season but you have to stay positive and keep a positive mindset when you're talking or writing about that group.” 

What have you learned most from your internship?

“I’ve learned that it takes a lot more work than what you see online, whether it’s planning or trying to make things fit into your schedule, it’s a lot of working pieces to get something as big as covering an entire state. Even with the podcast, we’ve been trying different formats to try and cut it down to at least an hour, hour and a half, but trying to cover the entire state of Missouri in each class is hard. We’ve been talking about doing more than one show a night or covering these conferences on this day and others on this day. So, definitely just learning about the amount of work and how you really have to be dedicated to it.” 

You’re going to Mizzou for journalism. What drew you to that? 

“I started out liking photography and videography, editing and stuff like that. I had always seen that on social media and I really liked it. I learned that photography was a very, very expensive hobby, so I shifted to graphic design. Then, I saw how many roads journalism can take you down and I like the writing aspect of it, the social media, the broadcasting, so I dipped my toes into a little bit of everything. I learned that I like a lot of the aspects and I wanted to pursue it.” 

When did you start doing all of these things?

“I started doing graphic design last year because I got a MacBook and I had always seen that our school didn’t really have much advertising for events and games. I started making posts last year with football and then basketball. I learned through watching videos and found some graphics that I wanted to try and recreate. I’ve also made a few commitment posts for people and I’ve done a little bit of baseball stuff.” 

Is sports journalism what you want to pursue?

“Definitely. I’ve always wanted to keep it sports focused because I knew I didn’t want to pursue sports at the next level, but I wanted to stay around it. I’ve been around sports my entire life and there’s so many stories behind each player. That’s what really drew me to it and doing something like that has always been a dream of mine.” 

Are you leaning towards writing, radio or broadcast?

“I like all of them and that’s why I really wanted to try and use this internship to get a feel for everything.” 

Is there something you wrote or created that you are most proud of?

“If I’m not mistaken, I made a graphic for our football district championship game. I made it kind of like a collage and made it look like a messy desk. I got a polaroid cut out and inserted a photo in there and cut people out and made them with stickers on the table. Then, I used tape and a marker font.” 

If you could cover one sporting event, past or present, what would it be?

“The first thing that came to my head is whenever the Celtics won the NBA Championship with Kevin Garnett. I read his book and the book covered topics in his life from A to Z. Hearing about his story and how growing up with his family, his mom did not want him to play basketball to see how much he’s done in the NBA, seeing him succeed and winning that championship, is probably the game or series I would want to cover the most.”