I've been carrying a secret for the past four years, but now is the time to finally come clean, the last chance I'll get to set the record straight.
I did not write for my school newspaper in high school. The only two pieces I ever had published were a pair of profiles for my town magazine - and one doesn't even count since I wrote it in middle school. As an eager high school freshman, I never dreamed about writing for my college newspaper, and I had never even heard of The Brown Daily Herald.
So why did I wander into a Herald sports staff meeting a week into my first semester at Brown? I can't honestly say, since I didn't know anyone there, I wasn't accompanied by my freshman roommate or any of the five people I knew on campus at the time (all from my unit, of course) and I had no idea what to expect.
My love of sports and my interest in writing led me to attend that first meeting.
Over the course of the meeting, the sports editors doled out fall assignments to all the returning reporters. To my surprise, the sports editor actually asked me which sports I was interested in covering. I mumbled something about being a freshman, then added that I liked watching football and had played soccer in high school. The editor quickly moved on to the next person. At the end of the meeting, the man in charge told me to cover the field hockey team and gave me one responsibility: "Go to the damn game!"
I struggled to articulate my utter lack of knowledge about field hockey and newspaper writing, but the meeting had already broken up.
Needless to say, the night I turned in my first story, I expected the worst. I anticipated ridicule for my horrendous piece of writing and reporting.
Then a funny thing happened. My editor loved almost every one of the 600 words I had pieced together over the course of four hours (I was a little nervous my first time out). He said my writing led him to conclude that I had actually read a newspaper article before.
The sports editors promoted me shortly thereafter. I eventually spent two semesters running the sports section and then served two more semesters on the editorial board of The Herald.
Looking back, it is frightening to think that had I scoffed at my field hockey assignment, I would have missed out on the greatest experience of my college career. I learned more about myself and my university by reporting and editing the articles seen in The Herald's pages every day. I learned how to interview people in authoritative positions without being intimidated or distracted. I learned how to prepare for interviews with the football coach so I could avoid wasting his time - and how to recognize the aggravated look that usually followed a question he deemed inane. I learned how to find the most intriguing and important aspect of a story and extract a (half-)decent narrative from it.
I never felt more connected to the campus community than when I wrote and edited for The Herald. Some of my fondest memories from college came courtesy of the 2005 football team - the first Brown squad to win the Ivy League Championship outright. I reported from every game but one that season, and I had the opportunity to observe a group of true student-athletes accomplish a goal every bit as impressive as a national championship.
The one game I'll never forget from that season is the lone game Brown lost, a 38-35 decision to Harvard in double overtime. It was a picture-perfect fall day. After an idyllic morning studying in Harvard Yard, I covered one of the most dramatic, well-played, heartbreaking football games I can remember.
Along the way I had the good fortune to cover several hard-working, cooperative and professional individuals, guys such as Jamie Gasparella '06, Steve Storrs '06, Joe DiGiacomo '07 and Zak DeOssie '07. Even though they were in the middle of accomplishing something never before done at Brown, they always had time to take my calls after film study or give me five extra minutes after the game to chat in the locker room.
During that season, I wrote a story about the 1976 Ivy League title team and investigated the similarities between the two squads. I spent a few afternoons in the John Hay Library perusing Herald articles about that season. The thought did not dawn on me at the time, but now looking back on my time at The Herald I can imagine a scribe in the future working through the archives of the 2005 football season. It is extraordinarily humbling to think that when a Brunonian 20 years from now needs to learn about the 2005 championship football team, he or she will likely rely on my copy to recreate the season. I can only hope I did an adequate job for all those who followed the sports I covered - and especially for that future aspiring journalist.
Stephen Colelli '08 served as a sports staff writer, sports editor and executive editor for The Herald. He was also occasionally charged with writing witty - and often spurious - headlines to spice up the back page.
