Q: Tell us a little about yourself and your history with sports journalism.
I grew up in the small town of Council Grove, Kansas, and graduated with a degree in journalism and mass communications from Kansas State University. I played sports in high school and always planned to be a radio play-by-play announcer.
That is what I did for the first eight years of my career in Kansas and Arkansas. I was then hired to be the sports editor of the newspaper in Searcy, Arkansas. I spent four years in that job before coming to Abilene to be the sports editor of the Abilene Reporter-News.
After 15 years at the Reporter-News, I left to work for myself for the past 25 years. I own an oil and gas reporting service. I did high school football, basketball and baseball play-by-play for Abilene High and Cooper, as well as Hardin-Simmons University. I still do the live stream broadcast of the home games for Hardin-Simmons football and basketball.
I have freelanced for at least five different magazines, including Varsity Preview. And I have written six books, all sports-related non-fiction. My latest book, “It Must Be A Big Game,” is stories from my 50-plus years of covering sports. My book “Brother’s Keeper” was made into a movie, “Under the Stadium Lights.”
I also remain active in Big Country sports as the founder and chairman of the Big Country Athletic Hall of Fame, which has a museum in the Mall of Abilene.
Q: What is your favorite part of being the editor of Varsity Preview?
Having spent so much of my career covering high school sports in the Big Country, I love keeping my hand in it in a small way while writing the Varsity Preview stories. I love seeing Big Country teams have success on the state-wide level.
Q: What’s your favorite Big Country sport to cover? Why?
I love covering all sports, but doing football is probably my favorite simply because it draws the biggest interest from fans.
Q: What’s the most inspiring high school sports story you’ve covered or experienced?
I have two favorite high school sports stories that I have covered. I broadcast Abilene High’s state championship football season in 2009. And on a personal note in 2019, I watched my grandson hit a walk-off two-run double for Wylie in the bottom of the eighth inning of Game 3 of a best-of-three baseball playoff series.
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