Dave Nichols: The awesome, daunting, exhausting, thrilling, stressful, humbling responsibility of covering state basketball

TACOMA – I’m writing in this space for a couple of reasons, none of which is I have nothing better to do.

As I sit down to do this from the floor of Tacoma Dome, it’s two hours after the Central Valley girls basketball team won its seventh state title and two hours before the Gonzaga Prep boys team tries for its fourth in the past 15 years under coach Matty McIntyre. With the late start and our early deadlines, we’ll be lucky to publish G-Prep’s final score and a snippet in the paper.

But our esteemed columnist Vince Grippi had a terrific online column for Saturday morning (and not just because he mentioned me, specifically) and with his permission, I wanted to expand on the themes he wrote about. Grippi wrote about the awesome responsibility that high school sports writers have covering and chronicling the exploits of young athletes, their coaches and schools. It’s a daunting task throughout the school year, even more so during state playoffs, regardless of the sport.

But the state basketball tournaments just play a little different.

Maybe it’s the jam-packed schedules, oversized (and overamplified) arenas, or the physical proximity basketball gives the players, fans, and yes, the media.

There’s no denying the raw emotion of state basketball – whether it’s in Tacoma for the big schools, Yakima for 2A/1A or in Spokane for State B.

I spent 23 years in litigation – a high-stress profession – and sports journalism is a second career for me. It’s fun. Sports is supposed to be fun. But there’s a nonzero amount of stress and anxiety that is inherent in the job.

For me, that doesn’t come from deadlines or editors or even the difficult schedules or taxing travel. For me, it’s the pressure of telling the story that will be shared in scrapbooks, hung in trophy cases, or as Grippi said, pulled up on a cellphone at a 20-year reunion. What I write means something to those families, and it always will. It’s a daunting, awesome responsibility. And I never take it casually or cavalierly.

I don’t like tooting my own horn, but it was nice that Grippi went out of his way to mention that when he was the high school sports editor for The S-R, the paper had three full-time preps writers for Washington, one for North Idaho and a bunch of veteran part-timers available to cover games. Now, it’s just me and a few correspondents we can pull away briefly from their other responsibilities for the big events (and I am beyond thankful for them). Please don’t think I’m complaining – or fishing for compliments. I say this only to say that I wish I could be in multiple places at once.

Let me be clear — I am far from a one-man show. I need to take a moment to thank our crews in Yakima, at the Arena and in the office this week. It’s a ton of work to bring you all of these stories, stats and photos over a four-day period, and I’m proud of the work we’ve produced this year, and every year.

I had to stand at the curtain between the two courts in Tacoma on Friday and keep score for both the G-Prep and CV semifinals at the same time, try to make sense of the two close games, then try to track everyone down afterward to be able to have their words in the game stories (that I hope were cogent and coherent).

I’ll openly thank CV coach Jason Wilson and Brynn McGaughy for waiting 20 minutes after coming out of the locker room so I could talk to them on Friday – and athletic director Robin Barnhart for tracking them down. It’s been my absolute privilege to cover McGaughy and the Hull twins and Anton Watson and Teryn Gardner and Tyson Degenhart and so many others in Tacoma, but I’ve been the high school sports editor for The Spokesman for eight years now and I still haven’t been to State B. I’d like to rectify that someday, but it will probably have to wait until I’m retired (for the second time).

I realize this is starting to sound a little self-congratulatory – maybe it is, sorry. But it’s coming from a point of gratitude.

I am humbly thankful that so many young people (and their coaches, administrators and parents) have trusted me to tell their stories. I have always taken the opinion that my job is to put these young people in the best light possible – first, do no harm. Not everyone sees the job that way, but I don’t think there’s any other way.

I came at sportswriting backward – I started in the business covering pro sports, then shifted to colleges and now high schools (and high-school-aged hockey and baseball players). Covering high school sports is harder than either of the former. If a pro (or semi-pro in college) has a bad day, it’s just another day and they retreat to their private sanctuaries before doing it all again the next day.

But the joy and pain and exhilaration and utter dejection of high school sports is just so much more … profound. I get to, or have to, talk with teenagers that are having the absolute best – or worst – day of their entire lives. When I talk to them after a state championship game, they all have tears in their eyes either way. That isn’t easy.

I’m also thankful that the paper still sees this as being important as well. We’re lucky in Spokane that it’s a given – it’s not everywhere, and the ranks are dwindling.

An unofficial count, by myself and several other media types, came up with a list of six daily newspapers covering the State 4A and 3A tournaments in Tacoma – in the No. 13 media market in the country. The list halves for Yakima and then again in Spokane, where The Spokesman is the “paper of record” for the State B.

Don’t take it for granted. A coach of one of the B schools took to social media this week lamenting their (decent-sized) city’s lack of coverage of high school sports by the daily paper. It’s an unfortunate, common refrain.

As long as I have the job, I will always fight for the opportunity to tell these stories, keeping in mind the awesome responsibility that comes with it.