SENIOR COLUMN: Reminiscing about the good old days in the world of DPOSTM

For four years, I have been a part of The Daily Pennsylvanian's Only Staff That Matters even though I never thought seriously about a career in journalism. I am an engineer, but I am an engineer who loves sports. And for that simple reason, I decided to trek out to the introductory DP meeting my first week at Penn. The Pink Palace was packed that day with naive freshmen who had no clue what it would be like to write for a college paper. About 20 of us were interested in covering sports -- an amazingly high number. But this was 1995, and nothing was bigger than sports on the Penn campus. We were a school caught up in the momentum of two straight Quakers' titles in basketball and a recent NCAA tournament win. We had read the Sports Illustrated article on Penn's undefeated football season that detailed the demolition of Keith Elias and the hated Princeton Tigers. There was no doubt in our minds that in a few months we would be storming Franklin Field to tear down the goalposts and throw them into the Schuylkill Expressway? I mean River. We knew that in March we would assemble in the Palestra to watch Penn almost pull out a tournament win against Alabama. All of us who entered the office that day wanted to be a part of this new religion known as Penn sports. Yet the words that came out of Sports Editor Adam Rubin's mouth almost shattered my dreams. Out of the 20 freshmen in the room, only 10 of us would get a sport to cover. And if we didn't get a sport to start off with, well we probably would never have a chance to write for The Daily Pennsylvanian. Times have certainly changed. Ten of us got calls that night, and I was one of the fortunate ones. My first assignment was covering all three crew teams, and I was scared. I knew nothing about crew, other than it involved people rowing together in a boat. Yet somehow the teams began to appreciate a writer taking the bus to the boathouse and showing some actual concern for the teams. When I wasn't getting recruited for lightweight crew, I was pursuing my first major story. The lightweight coach had decided to speak about the unfair treatment he thought his team received from the Athletic Department. I interviewed him for over an hour and began to make calls to Penn Athletic Director Steve Bilsky. Not surprisingly, I received a call from the coach telling me he was wrong and there was nothing to write about. I learned early on that there are a lot of things the Athletic Department wants to keep hidden. My next sport was track, and I will always remain grateful to Penn track coaches Charlie Powell and Nathan Taylor. I would often just walk into their offices to sit down and talk track, and they were always honest and candid when I interviewed them. I will also remember athletes such as Chris Harper, Kelsey Armstrong and John Taylor, whose athletic achievements are met by their qualities as people. Yet my fondest memory will always be Penn Relays that freshman year. Coach Powell gave me a Relays official hat, which basically allowed me to roam the infield all day while everyone else was kicked off. I joked around with Bill Cosby and tried to talk with Michael Johnson. To top off the day, I anchored our relay team to a bronze medal win in the Media Relay. I find it ironic that a not-so-good high school track athlete like myself had the chance to run in front of 40,000 people, while people who could kick my ass on the track never have the opportunity. The Penn Relays will always be one of the highlights of my time at Penn, so I think it's fitting that I was able to walk away with a gold medal in my final race this year. Sophomore year brought probably the toughest challenge of my writing career: the 1995-96 edition of Penn women's basketball. That team rattled off 21 straight losses to start the year, most of them blowouts. There are only so many losses you can witness before frustration comes out in your articles. By the time the team won, I had almost forgotten how to write a positive story. I guess coach Julie Soreiro appreciated my efforts, because she kept on giving me free t-shirts throughout the year. Next up was baseball, a sport I would write about for three years in a row. Coach Bob Seddon is one of the few coaches who will answer the questions that you didn't ask, but should have. I remember one interview that lasted almost half an hour after I asked just one question. Seddon would always point out that there are three keys to winning baseball: pitching, hitting and defense, and you will only win if you do at least two of them well. Somehow I managed to never witness a baseball game in three years, which has to be a record. The last two years I had the privilege of being one of the Swamis as well as writing about the Quakers on the gridiron. While Penn hasn't matched its season of three years ago, I still enjoyed covering football more than any other sport. Penn coach Al Bagnoli, a fellow Connecticut kid, was always willing to talk about even the most difficult of subjects. Defensive coordinator Mike Toop is honestly one of the scariest people I've interviewed. Yet when you aren't worried about him using you as a tackling dummy over something you wrote, you realize how much his wealth of defensive knowledge has shaped the Quaker "D" in recent years. After two years of partying in the stands during games, I found it difficult to remain reserved, and sober, in the press box. Yet Saturdays in the fall still carried with them a special kind of excitement, even if that sentiment wasn't felt by most of the campus. For an article this year, I talked with members of the Penn football team from 50 years ago. NFL great Chuck Bednarik talked about playing in front of 70,000 people each week and actually out-drawing the Eagles. I know it's unrealistic to hope for a packed Franklin Field each week, but it is still discouraging to look across from the press box to see only a handful of fans among the empty seats of one of the country's legendary stadiums. Men's basketball is yet another sport that has fallen from the championship level since I started covering it. Yet the past two years have brought some exciting moments to the Palestra as the Quakers have flashed some of the ability that should land them in the Big Dance next year. I wish that I could be here to see Penn dominate the Ivy League next year, as well as remind Princeton that last year was a fluke. I'll always remember the last game against Princeton, when Penn almost pulled off an amazing comeback. If the Quakers had won, I would have said "the hell with journalistic integrity" and charged the floor. I just have one thing to tell coach Dunphy: make sure you check the intramural football rosters. Now this rambling column has reached the point where I begin to preach. I guess what I've been attempting to get across is that the last four years I've tried to balance being a fan and being a reporter, and a lot of times the fan won out. Yet too often I've gotten the sense that the other writers could care less about the actual outcome of the games and were more worried about quotes and deadlines. As I leave the DP, I am beginning to see a return to the atmosphere of four years ago, when writing for DPOSTM was more than a one-year resume item. Over 20 reporters are returning, and I urge all of them to sometimes be a fan. I know we are supposed to be unbiased observers, but I believe that true passion only comes out in writing when somehow you feel connected to the team. It's the only reason that this chemical engineer has stayed on for four years while other writers have left before they ever made it to Chicken Hutch. There are a lot of people who have influenced my writing through the years, including all 13 editors: Adam, Josh, Jed, Nick, Jeff, Michael, Eric, Scott, Jordan, Miles, Josh, Kent and Marc. I'd also like to thank Noah Davis, my classmate since kindergarten who started me on my journalism journey in high school. Finally, I'd like to thank Jen Shook, my girlfriend who always understood that the article sometimes took precedence above everything else. I'll still be in Philly next year, so I'll be sure to see as many games as I can when I'm not sitting in front of my computer at my job. I'll also try to make it to the aforementioned Hutch trip and hope that the car doesn't break down this time. Good luck to all of the other seniors, and thank you if you've decided to read my last words for DPOSTM.

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