Should have worn more than a hoodie. Should have worn more than a hoodie.
That's what I kept telling myself about a year and two months ago, fighting to keep my hands from frostbite as a better-late-than-never snowstorm turned my Easter Sunday softball doubleheader coverage into a Survivor Man-esque battle against Mother Nature.
Fast-forward five months. I'm 10 miles from cellphone signal on the sidelines of the Corner High School football field in Warrior, Ala., hopelessly swatting away sweat-thirsty gnats as I try (even with more hopeless avail) to keep stats at a sold-out preseason scrimmage.
Two months later, I'm on the sidelines again. This time 86 miles southwest at Bryant-Denny Stadium for a pivotal Southeastern Conference matchup between LSU and Alabama. By my side, American Idol Taylor Hicks, whose clammy hands are leaving ever-increasing wet marks on his designer jeans as he, I and 75,000 others watch the Crimson Tide fumble away a shot at knocking off the future national champions.
And now here I am, back in Athens, nine days from graduation and six months removed from my first day as Sports Editor.
Kind of an anticlimactic end, huh?
No, not one bit.
Because it was here, not Alabama, where I got my start more than three years ago. A skinnier, less cocky version of myself showed up to the old Baker University Center on a cold January night (in more than just a hoodie) not knowing a lick of what to expect at the weekly Post Sports Staff meeting.
Dirty looks? Obscure journalism terms? An overall frosh don't know the difference between a zone defense and a Roni Zoni vibe?
Hardly.
The comfort felt that night replicated what I feel every time I walk through the door to room 325 in new Baker Center.
From day one, The Post became the place I could go for journalism advice from someone my own age, the place I could go to pretend to get homework done but really end up working on stories or ' back in the early days ' the place I could go to smell rotting sewage.
Granted, I wasn't always here as much as I am now, spending most of my time behind a computer screen trying to mimic the great editors who preceded me.
Instead ' pardon my hippie overtones ' I was out there, man.
I was out there for the highs, like when the football team clinched its first-ever Mid-American Conference divisional title my junior year. Or when Erin Isbell knocked in a short jumper at the buzzer to beat Miami in the 2005 regular-season finale. Or when the men's basketball team came back from what seemed like 58 points to beat former Cinderella George Mason and celebrated as if they had beaten Duke.
I was out there for the lows, too. Seated in the second row for Frank Solich's weekly news conference, I watched President Roderick McDavis and former Athletic Director Kirby Hocutt deliver the grim news that four athletes would be immediately suspended in the wake of a troubling string of athletes running afoul of the law.And I was in The Convo on press row as whispers turned into murmurs, and murmurs turned into shouts of protest about four sports getting the ax.
More importantly though, I was out there for the stories that took me away from the cozy confines of 45701. Taking a four-hour drive up to Cleveland to watch the women's basketball team at the MAC tournament seemed like a no-brainer. Ditto for the following year to watch the men bow out in similar fashion. And how 'bout a two-day, 28-hour round trip to Mobile, Ala., to watch an overmatched Bobcats team get worked by Southern Miss? Best decision I ever made.
Just like walking into old Baker Center on that cold January night.
' Andrew Gribble is a senior journalism major and The Post's Sports Editor. He is graduating and leaving Athens to take an internship with MLB.com in Cleveland. Send him an e-mail at ag358604@ohiou.edu.
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Andrew Gribble
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