Hello, Plant City. Nice to meet you.
After 18 months under the direction of former Associate Editor Matt Mauney, the sports section for the Plant City Times & Observer has been entrusted to me.
I’ve spoken with many of you recently and heard all about the great job that Matt did with his coverage, and I’m committed to keeping up his high standards.
This is my first job coming out of college, but it’s far from my first rodeo as a sportswriter.
I’ve been covering prep and college sports for about three years now, beginning in 2011, with Naples Daily News. I worked there in varying roles for most of those three years, taking a break every summer, while I was out of town.
While there, I covered football, baseball, basketball, soccer, swimming, golf, volleyball and even some hockey. My favorite gig was when I got to do live coverage of the 2012 City of Palms basketball tournament. I’ve also contributed a number of stories to The Lakeland Ledger and the Fort Myers News-Press.
I’m a very recent graduate of Florida Gulf Coast University, and I can honestly say that I picked the Eagles to advance past the first round of the NCAA March Madness tournament. I’m sure that puts me in a very small group of people, but I will say this for the near future: Don’t sleep on the Eagles this season. I’ve seen them practice recently, and they’re an even better team now than they were last season.
Although the size of my beat in Plant City is much smaller — transitioning from an area with 31 high schools to an area with three — the fan support I’ve seen at the high school football games in the past two weeks has been better than anything I’ve seen in person in a long time. Any football game can be watchable when the crowd gets into it, so it’s been great to be able to attend two good games in a row.
And with the Strawberry Crest-Durant game coming up, I’m pretty sure I’ll be up to three in a row at the end of Friday night.
If you know of a team or outstanding player that we should feature within our section, or if you want to nominate someone as our Athlete of the Week, please let me know. As a community newspaper, we want to fill these pages with stories, photos and information that is important to our readership. Some of our best headlines have come from an email or phone call from a reader. Plus, I’m always up for a good conversation.
I’m looking forward to covering all things Plant City sports, working with many of you and digging into all of the great stories that are tucked away in this little historic Florida town.
