I was a high school athlete from 1991 to 1995, and some of my clearest memories don’t come from the field, the court, or the locker room. They come from Saturday mornings.
I can still picture it clearly. Rolling out of bed. Grabbing a doughnut. Washing it down with a bottle of chocolate milk. That particular breakfast routine may have something to do with my current physical stature, but at the time it felt like tradition. Then I would reach for the local paper, flip straight to the sports section, and relive what had happened the night before.
Who scored. Who won. Who stepped up. Who surprised everyone.
For a high school kid, there was nothing quite like seeing your name, or your teammate’s name, in print. Even better was seeing your team on the front page or featured under a bold headline. It made the hard work feel real. It made the long practices, the sore muscles, and the pressure worth it. Someone noticed. Someone cared enough to tell the story.
That “someone” was the local sports journalist.
High school athletics do not thrive on scholarships, television contracts, or endorsement deals. They thrive on community. And for decades, the connective tissue of that community has been the local sports writer who showed up night after night to document moments that mattered deeply to a small group of people, even if the rest of the world never noticed.
It is an incredibly demanding job. Travel across counties and back roads. Late nights in cold gyms and windy stadiums. Weekends that disappear into scoreboards and stat sheets. Deadlines that do not care how tired you are or how late the final buzzer sounds. Writers often work without sleep, pushing to get stories filed so they can land on doorsteps before the sun comes up.
You do it because it matters.
I came to understand that commitment more deeply when I first got to know Scott DeCamp. Watching him work, you quickly realize the story always comes first. The details matter. The names matter. Getting it right matters. There is an unwavering sense of responsibility to the athletes, the coaches, the schools, and the communities that trust him to tell their story fairly and accurately.
What many people never see are the sacrifices behind that commitment. Missed family time. Long drives home after midnight. Meals eaten in press boxes or cars. All so our student athletes are seen, recognized, and remembered. Scott is not alone in that dedication. He stands on the shoulders of generations of local sports journalists who quietly made the same sacrifices year after year.
Today, that world is disappearing.
We talk a lot about “news deserts,” but we often frame them in terms of politics or breaking news. What gets lost is the impact on small-town sports. The cost model for newspapers has collapsed. Advertising dollars dried up. Print subscriptions declined. And when budgets shrink, local sports coverage is often one of the first things cut. Talented writers are forced to find other avenues for income, not because the work isn’t valuable, but because it is no longer sustainable.
The ones who suffer most are small communities. Their stories go untold. Their athletes compete in front of empty press boxes. Their accomplishments live only in memory instead of print. When coverage disappears, so does a shared record of who we were and what we accomplished together.
That is why it matters to say thank you.
Thank you to the journalists who showed up when no one else did. Thank you to the ones who sat courtside with a notebook, drove home in snowstorms, filed stories at 1 a.m., and did it all again the next night.
A Tribute to Those Who Told Our Stories
Over the years, countless local sports journalists have sacrificed time, energy, sleep, and income to highlight our kids and preserve our local sports history. What follows is a tribute to many of those who showed up and told the story. If someone has been missed or miscategorized, please add or correct it in the comments.
- James F. “Jimmy” Henderson – Early standard-setter whose influence carried well into later generations.
- Dick Hedges – Sportswriter and founder of the Muskegon Area Sports Hall of Fame.
- Cindy Fairfield – Sports writer and later Sports Editor, mentoring younger journalists along the way.
- Mike Mattson – Longtime sportswriter whose bylines spanned decades.
- John Jarvi – Chronicle staff writer covering local sports in the mid-1980s.
- Tom Kendra – Assistant Sports Editor and later Sports Editor during a transitional era for newspapers.
- Mark Opfermann – Sports writer contributing to local coverage during the 1990s.
- Brian Beebe – Sports correspondent covering area athletics.
- Scott Brandenburg – Correspondent whose work helped fill community coverage gaps.
- Matt Poe – Local sports correspondent during the 1990s.
- Scott DeCamp – Modern-era local sports reporter whose unwavering commitment to accuracy, presence, and storytelling defines what the job still should be.
- Josh VanDyke – Current sports reporter continuing the tradition of local coverage despite shrinking resources.
- Andy Roberts – Longtime sports reporter who later became editor, ensuring coverage continued even as resources tightened.
- Greg Means – Editor whose leadership helped sustain community journalism.
These names represent far more than bylines. They represent Friday nights, Saturday mornings, and a belief that local stories are worth telling.
So the next time you see a score, a photo, or a feature about a student athlete, remember the person behind it. The one who worked through the night so someone else could wake up and feel proud.
They were there for us.
And for generations of high school athletes, they always have been.
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