Covering sports for the Patriot Talon

Jeremy Cotham chattered from the back seat desperately trying to stay awake as the rental car headed north on State Highway 91 toward Orlando, Fla.
It’s nearly 2 a.m. and the sports editor for the Patriot Talon, the student newspaper at The University of Texas at Tyler, is losing the battle as the drone of tires rolling on pavement finally lulls him to sleep.

For the next eight hours, Cotham and fellow sports writer Clay Ihlo knew they would have few chances for catnaps as they rode with their adviser to catch a 5 a.m. flight to Newark, N. J. The itinerary included a short layover in Charlotte, N.C.

Jeremy Cotham, right, interviews a UT Tyler Patriot softball player during the World Series in Montclair, New Jersey in 2009.

The group spent the previous two days covering the NCAA Div. III Golf Championship in Port St. Lucie, about 90 minutes south of Orlando, and now must wing their way to Montclair State University to cover the Div. III Softball World Series.

It is an historic spring for UT Tyler, which sent both men’s and women’s golf teams, the softball team, a men’s tennis doubles team, and a distance runner to nationals for the first time in school history.

Cotham and Ihlo covered three softball games before the Patriots were eliminated from the competition. Between games, the two monitored — via the Internet and telephone — the golf teams’ final rounds and the men’s baseball team playing at a regional tournament in Oregon.

Their daily reports and photographs were posted on the Talon’s website or used by the Tyler newspaper and even the university’s athletic department website. A special sports section for the student newspaper is scheduled for late June.

“I couldn’t ask for a better end to my senior year,” Cotham, 22, of Longview, said. “When I first came to UT, I never imagined I would get this type of opportunity. Experience like this is really big … a great opportunity to build my portfolio.”

For Ihlo, a junior journalism major from Center, the East Coast trip was a trial by fire — not only for writing on a daily deadline, but learning how to be a photojournalist too.

“It’s definitely an amazing opportunity,” Ihlo said. “If you had told me in November when I started working for the Talon that I would be doing this, I would’ve been a little shocked.”

For two lifelong sports enthusiasts, writing about sports is the next best thing to playing sports, they said.

“Only a handful of people get to be collegiate athletes. Even fewer go on to be professionals,” said Ihlo, who won a regional golf title in high school. “As a writer, I might get to witness something only a handful of people get to see. I’m the mediator of information for our readers.”

In early May, for example, Ihlo traveled to Clinton, Miss. to cover the American Southwest Conference Championships and saw the Patriots earn seven runs in the top of the ninth inning to advance.

Clay Ihlo covering sports

“It was absolutely incredible,” he recalled.

Ihlo credited his father, a second-generation brick mason, for nudging him toward college instead of the family business.

He initially came to UT Tyler planning to transfer to Austin and study broadcasting, but because of various circumstances he decided to stay.
Ihlo was enrolled in Writing for the Mass Media, when he said his professor encouraged him to join the newspaper staff.

He began writing about sports and learned he even likes photography “more than I thought I would.”

Cotham, on the other hand, is a veteran Talon staff member —serving as its sports editor since he transferred from Kilgore College in the spring of 2007.
As a child he recalled drawing pictures of stadiums while listening to his father preach at church. He loved sports, playing in summer leagues and attending professional games with his father whenever they got a chance.

In his senior year at high school, Cotham said he realized he needed one more credit hour and decided to take a journalism course. His teacher convinced him to talk the newspaper adviser at Kilgore College.

“I loved working there and I worked my way up to sports editor,” he said.

Pursuing a journalism degree became Cotham’s new goal in life. “I always wanted to be an architect, but I found out it was really difficult,” Cotham said. “I learned I could get paid to go to sporting events as a writer. What’s better than that? If I can’t design stadiums then I’ll go to them to cover games.”

Cotham said he considered three area universities when the time came to transfer, but he chose UT Tyler after visiting the campus and talking with the student newspaper editor and adviser.

“The feeling of the campus was perfect,” he said. “and as soon as I saw the journalism lab … and I knew the paper needed a sports editor … I knew UT was it. It’s a decision I never regretted.”

As an award-winning sports editor, Cotham has traveled with the Patriots around Texas and Louisiana as well as Minnesota, Florida and New Jersey.
“I don’t think I would have done any of this stuff if I had chosen somewhere else to finish school,” he said. “I think all the other student journalists would just die to get to do what I’ve done.”

Cotham said covering sporting events by telephone or e-mail isn’t the way to gain valuable experience he needs to find a job.
“It wouldn’t be the same … you need to be talking to the players, the coach, parents and attending the press conferences afterward,” he said.
Cotham and Ihlo said they also feel a sense a pride in learning they were the only student media attending the golf championship in Florida and among only a few professional reporters covering the softball tournament.

“The coaches’ faces when they see us there … they get to brag to the other coaches about the coverage,” he said. “And the players come up to us and thank us for being there.”

Cotham was so committed to covering the Patriots’ softball team, he decided not to attend his own graduation when there was a time conflict — a decision that, at first, didn’t please his mother.

“Covering these games gave me a lot more experience than walking across the stage,” he said. “My mother didn’t like it at first, but she realized I don’t get these chances very often.”

Cotham has been working this past year in the oil industry, but plans to continue working as a freelance sports writer for area newspapers until the right journalism job comes along.

As for Ihlo, he returns to UT this fall ready to step into Cotham’s shoes and covering what he hopes is another good year for Patriots athletic teams.