by Aaron Jaffe ‘21

The year is 2017 and I am nothing but a wide-eyed freshman with two things in my mind: I love sports, and I like to talk about them as much as I can. I decided to see what I could do with this little bit of knowledge and signed up for the now extinct journalism class at Sherwood. The class began by focusing on current events and precise grammar work, not entirely what I expected but it gave me the proper writing skills, unique techniques, and a style of writing that I use with each and every piece of writing I create.

Fast forward a few months of “doing the dirty work” and my friend Jackson and I were assigned to cover the girls varsity basketball team, the first of many beat reporting jobs. We went to the games, we interviewed players and coaches, and I felt like I could do this for the rest of my life. It was the rush of feeling that you knew more than the average fan and had that inside information that was only captured by you. Once the season ended, I followed up with another beat, this time with boys lacrosse. I had prior friendships with many of the players on the team, and it made the whole experience more enjoyable feeling like a friend of the team, rather than an annoying media member. I can only hope that one day I will move up high enough in the world to repeat this experience and develop relationships with pro athletes.

After getting a few beat jobs under my belt, I felt more comfortable in my writing than ever. Over the next two years, I wrote about boys varsity basketball, boys lacrosse (again), wrestling, and the biggest sport at the school, football. To be engaged with the school and the players was possibly my most enjoyable high school experience and my most significant contribution to Sherwood in my two and a half years of in person learning. My writing was also not just limited to covering Sherwood sports. I covered all four major U.S. professional sports, as well as college basketball and football. I wrote articles on everything from mock drafts, to season predictions, to march madness brackets, to opinions on teams, and reactions to the biggest events from the sports world at their time. Writing about my hometown DC teams and other pro level sports teams was the most natural writing for me and confirmed what I had wanted to do with my life.

The pandemic came, and my writing was put on pause. However, because of Mr. Huck, the newspaper teacher/overseer-er of all, it wasn’t for long before I was able to get involved again and write about sports from the quarantined bubble of my home. The college process began and I looked for schools that would allow me to write and enjoy a big time sports scene. A few short months later, I received my acceptance to the University of Maryland as well as an acceptance to the Phillip Merrill School of Journalism. Being in my home state at one of the best journalism programs in the country was something a freshman me would have only dreamed about. Now as a senior with only a few short weeks to go, I will look back on my time at Sherwood as memorable steps towards my future.