By: Lisa Hiton
There’s a minute left on the clock. The score is tied. You’ve got 60 seconds to get the ball and make the shot. This kind of thrill and anxiety, this urgency, is at the core of sports journalism—of getting your beat or story captured by a paper’s deadline.
Sports journalism may seem like a simple play-by-play of a game gone by. But sports journalism must also capture the spirit of the sport and the moment in time an event occurred. The journalist needs to bring in vivid descriptions from the sporting event, details of key plays, and statistics that can help a reader—especially one who missed the big event—feel that they are caught up on the goings-on of their teams, athletes, and sports culture at large. Sports journalism is as fast-paced as a sprint to the finish line. Writers can keep up that pace by studying the techniques of the genre and practicing them everyday.
“From Sports Fan to Sports Reporter”
If you want to be a sports writer, you’ll need to love watching sports as much of your time will be spent doing just that! But how can we take our fandom and turn it into a vocation?
Perhaps the defining quality of good journalism is an oath to non-bias in writing. For sports especially, this can be hard—to watch an event without rooting for anyone, but instead, studying what happens at each turn. Sports journalist and professor, Joe Gisondi, describes this with one simple sports-based phrase: “There’s no cheering in the press box”. It’s the first section of Field Guide to Covering Sports, his craft book on becoming a sports journalist.
To Gisondi, the biggest difference in sounding like a fan versus sounding like a professional has to do with training:
This book provides even the most basic writers with the tools they need to succeed on their first assignments. It trains writers to answer, in advance, the questions their editors and readers will ask: What happened? How? Why? The running back ran for 200 yards. Any fan can see that, but a journalist needs to explain why. Did the offensive tackles drive back a smaller defensive line? Did the offensive coordinator scheme so well that the defense was confused? Did this running back follow his blockers well or display amazing athleticism?
A track runner broke the county record in the mile. How? Did she take the lead early, have to kick it in for the final lap or get pulled along by a competitive field? And how did she train to prepare for this meet?
Just like athletes, journalists need training.
(Gisondi, xii)
As Gisondi points out, the training and practice required of athletes is also required of reporters. Through his book, writers can learn the key terms of sports journalism as well as the techniques that can turn us all from super fans into super reporters.
Field Guide to Covering Sports by Joe Gisondi: As a sports journalist at a variety of newspapers for over 20 years, Joe Gisondi’s field guide to sports writing is for budding journalists who want to take their sports-watching hobby into a writing career. Gisondi’s book begins with the basic rules that help a viewer of sports understand the difference between being a fan and a reporter.
The book then moves into the elements of sports writing, which include: leads, organization, context and analysis, key plays, using statistics, quotations, etc. Gisondi then breaks down techniques based on the sports themselves. He first examines key techniques in conducting interviews (of athletes and of sports fans). Gisondi moves on to dedicate whole sections of his book to writing about high school sports, feature writing, and approaches to sports journalism within different sports beats—basketball, auto racing, swimming, gymnastics, volleyball, and more.
Sports Journalism Book Picks
While we often think of sports reporting as a play-by-play of a game, the more non-fiction sports writing we read, the more we can see how these writing skills can expand into much larger stories, interviews, biographies, and ultimately, new perspectives on sports and their roles in culture and history. So this month, here are our picks for books worth studying with your sports-writing eyes, paired with questions you might ask of the books as you read along:
Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen by Christopher McDougall: Christopher McDougall’s epic adventure begins with one question: why does my foot hurt? In seeking the answer, McDougall discovers the Tarahumara Indians who live in the Copper Canyons of Mexico. Despite the dangerous terrain, the Tarahumara Indians have been able to cultivate the art of running for survival—but not running as we may imagine it. Instead, the techniques of the Tarahumara Indians allow them to run for hundreds of miles without rest. McDougall’s book uses science, profiles of individual people, and inspiration to bring a story about athleticism and health to the world.
- What techniques does McDougall use to bring the landscape of the Sierra Madre to life? Are these the same ones he uses to introduce readers to the Tarahumara Indians?
- How does McDougall’s adventure mimic a race or an athlete’s experience in a race?
- What facts does McDougall give us about history? What facts does he give us about science? When does he give us these facts? Why?
- What techniques and practices does McDougall discover from his journey? How does he present them to us? Why does he present them this way?
My Fight / Your Fight by Ronda Rousey and Maria Burns Ortiz: Ronda Rousey’s autobiography, My Fight / Your Fight, tells the story of an Olympic gold medalist in judo and, at the time of the book’s publication, the UFC undefeated bantomweight champion. Rousey’s story is one of a champion, yes, but also of a survivor and a leader. Where women were never involved in the UFC, Rousey changed the game. From bartender to superstardom, Rousey has changed the world’s outlook on sports and women’s participation in them. While women’s sports often get scrutinized for differences—that women’s basketballs, for instance, are smaller and lighter, that women’s golf tees are lower, and so on, those arguments don’t hold against Rousey and her arena.
- Where do the techniques of creative nonfiction/memoir/essay differ from that of a journalist? Where are they the same? Find a few passages where Rousey employs these techniques.
- How does Rousey describe play-by-play moments of her athletic career? How are these descriptions unique?
- How do the facts of Rousey’s life mirror those of her athletic career? How do they challenge each other? When does she highlight these ebbs and flows?
- How do the photographs in the book speak to the larger story? Why are they black and white? How does photography work journalistically? Artistically?
The skill of reading, as we always say at Reading Like a Writer, is a crucial muscle for writers to exercise. In the world of sports journalism, reading the field must also be part of that reading practice. So as you go to your school baseball games, local cricket matches, campus quidditch tournaments, and to observe the best skaters at your skate park, think of what is beyond what you see—what practice and techniques may have helped the athletes and coaches you’ve observed. And like the books we’ve read, asking the right questions can lead us to writer’s answers.
