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Giving It the Old College Try
With its robust journalism and athletics programs, The Masters School has instilled a love of journalism and sports in many alumnae/i and current students. These five recent graduates have combined these passions in their college careers.
MITCH FINK ’21 would love to make his lifelong dream of becoming a sports journalist a reality. A first-year at Boston University’s College of Communication, Fink is a journalism major and sports editor of The Daily Free Press, the independent student newspaper. He puts his aspiration in perspective. “If that’s how it plays out, that would be great. I would love that,” he said.
As sports editor, Fink plans the sports content for the week and manages a newsroom staff of sports writers and columnists. “Working on a college newspaper is really rewarding,” Fink said. “It’s a lot of people putting together a product for the whole community.”
According to Fink, sports writing combines two of his greatest passions – writing and following his favorite sports teams. “I’ve always been a huge sports fan and I’ve never been particularly good at sports,” Fink shared. “I come from a family of writers and from a young age, I liked to write.”
Fink earned his sports writing chops at Masters where he was sports editor of Tower his junior year and co-editor in chief senior year. “Tower empowers students to pursue careers in journalism like it did for me,” he reflected.
Fortunately for Fink, the New York native has always been a Red Sox fan. “My dorm is right near Fenway Park. It’s definitely cool and a nice perk of being in Boston,” he noted. And yes, he admits, it would be tough to be a Yankees fan at Boston University.
There’s always the chance that DREW SCHOTT ’19 will encounter Fink, his fellow Masters School alumnus, in the press box. “At the moment,” said Schott, a senior at Northwestern University, “I would love to be a college football beat writer for a major newspaper or a place like The Athletic. I really love to write and I love beat reporting, so that’s my goal for the long term.” Currently Schott is in a journalism residency working as a sports reporting intern at The Arizona Republic.
Schott jumped into the sports reporting scene as soon as he entered Northwestern. He initially covered men’s soccer for The Daily Northwestern, the student-run newspaper. Having that beat “was instrumental in my growth as a journalist. It was a great way not only to get familiarized with beat reporting, but also a realistic introduction to a fast-paced newsroom, deadlines, and the different types of articles you have to write from precedes and game stories to features,” he said. Editorial positions on The Daily Northwestern soon followed. Schott was sports editor for a semester and then gameday editor responsible for coordinating the Daily’s coverage of Northwestern football. “You get a different perspective covering teams when you cover college football,” he said.
“Find ways to differentiate yourself,” advises Schott. “Talk to as many people as possible. You never know if these people will become sources, if they will help you with stories, and who these people may introduce to you in the future.”
Schott vividly remembers the sports articles he wrote for Tower and the edits and critiques he received from Tower advisor/ journalism teacher Ellen Cowhey. “It’s why I’m a better writer and where I am today,” he said.
When SHAWN FARHADIAN graduated from Masters in 2019, he knew he wanted to be a sports journalist. It was one of the reasons he chose the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California, a university with “amazing school spirit” and “an attractive sports scene.”
He hit the ground running. First semester freshman year, he became an assistant sports editor for the student newspaper, Daily Trojan, covering the school’s NCAA Division I football team. “I would go to football practice and interview players and coaches about practice and how they’re preparing for the game that week,” said Farhadian. By second semester, he was promoted to sports editor, overseeing the beat writers and laying out the sports section of the paper every night. “It was basically everything I did at Tower just on a much larger scale,” he explained. He credits his work on Tower and Ms. Cowhey with honing his editing, writing and communication skills. “My Tower experience served me well,” continued Farhadian, who was sports editor his senior year at Masters.
When COVID-19 hit the USC campus, student journalists — among others — were isolated from the games. This led Farhadian to re-evaluate his career goal. He realized his “passion is not writing about sports. It’s about being around sports and being able to be in that environment,” he said. He switched his major from journalism to communications and tried out for a student manager position for the football team.
As one of eight student managers working for the 100-plus players on the USC Trojans, Farhadian helped organize and manage practice and game-day logistics. He was responsible for ensuring
players had the proper equipment needed for practice and games.
“It was a great experience being around the players at practice and talking to the coaches. Being part of a team and having that firsthand experience was rewarding,” Farhadian said. “Even though the team didn’t do so well and the work was onerous and time-consuming, at the end of the day, being in that environment was something I really enjoyed.”
The USC junior is now enjoying being back in the stands as a spectator. He’s had the thrill of being on the field during football games and is happy watching the sport from a different vantage point.
Farhadian plans to pursue opportunities in the sports industry – perhaps with an agency or in a front office role. “Things change,” he reflected. “My experience writing for the Daily Trojan helped me realize that I don’t need to write about sports to be a part of it.”
Like Farhadian, SOPHIE GRAND ’21 arrived at college and immediately joined the student newspaper. Thanks to her work as chief design editor of Tower, Grand was well prepared to take on the responsibilities of managing design editor for The Michigan Daily at the University of Michigan. Grand designs the weekly Sports Monday covers and special edition pages and leads the team of illustrators, layout designers and infographic creators. “It’s a really cool experience designing covers and pages for such a huge newspaper at a DI Big Ten school,” she said. “I never expected to be designing covers celebrating wins like the UM vs OSU game or the crazy win against Iowa, where thousands of people across the country saw my work and ordered posters with the design on it.”
“I have a lot of creative freedom in my role and I enjoy being able to explore and broaden the types of layouts I do,” said Grand, who confesses to being a “huge” Michigan football fan and loves going to the games.
Grand hopes to start writing soon for The Michigan Daily. “Throughout my classes at Masters, I learned how to be an articulate writer,” she said. “I took Introduction to Journalism on a whim, ended up loving it and continued on that track with Tower.”
Grand’s classmate LOGAN SCHICIANO ’21 is on the same track. At Masters, Schiciano served as Tower editor-in-chief junior year and lead producer for Tower Broadcast News his senior year. A first-year student at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Schiciano is continuing his journey in the world of journalism and sports.
Schiciano hit the airwaves as soon as he landed in Evanston. He is the editor-in-chief of WNUR Sports, the student-run radio station, where he provides color commentary for a number of games, and an associate producer for NNN Sports, Northwestern’s student television station. He also is one of the managers of the women’s varsity lacrosse team.
“Managing lacrosse and getting to know the players and hearing what goes on behind the scenes and how they prepare for games really helped inform my overall knowledge of how a sports team functions, which of course is an important thing when you’re trying to report on a sports team,” Schiciano said.
Some highlights of Schiciano’s sports reporting at Northwestern in his first year include covering Northwestern’s victory in the 2021 NCAA Field Hockey National Championship and the men’s basketball team’s run in the Big Ten Tournament for NNN Sports.
“I love sports, but don’t know which path I’m going to go on right now. During the pandemic I got into national news and went to college thinking I would want to do more TV news, hard news as opposed to sports,” Schiciano said. “But that doesn’t mean if a good opportunity in sports broadcasting presented itself, I wouldn’t take it. I have plenty of time to figure it out.”
MITCH FINK ’21
