After four years of IDS success, I graduate

Four years ago, I had never written for a print publication.\nI wandered into Ernie Pyle Hall 120 during the Indiana Daily Student's Fall 2002 open house looking to start my journalism career at IU. But my media experience was minuscule at best having only worked with Internet radio in high school and job-shadowing briefly for ABC's station in Toledo, Ohio -- my hometown.\nI knew nothing about writing a lead or this one book us journalists refer to as the bible -- the AP Stylebook. Hell, my knowledge of Hoosier sports was limited to Bob Knight and Tom Coverdale's ankle in the 2002 NCAA Tournament. Keep in mind; I grew up 50 minutes south of Ann Arbor, Mich., and a little over two hours north of Columbus, Ohio. So naturally, the end of November -- when college football really heats up -- is a hectic time of year. Toledo isn't quite Wolverine territory and it isn't quite Buckeye territory, but I've long donned the scarlet and grey.\nWhat I did know is that I would gain a valuable opportunity at the IDS covering sports and reporting, which would help me in my ultimate goal of becoming a television sports reporter.\nGavin Lesnick and Katie Schoenbaechler hired me and assigned me the IU women's cross country beat knowing I had no prior experience -- just that I'd ran cross country in high school. It was relatively out of the ordinary for someone to walk in the newsroom and receive something like that.\nI did the same again sophomore year, along with the women's track and field beat. I had a standing Wednesday appointment with IU track coach Randy Heisler, who was very accommodating with interviews and is a great conversationalist.\nI was fortunate enough to cover IU men's soccer coach Mike Freitag in his first season as a head coach and the team's subsequent NCAA National Championship. When I came to IU, I really had no idea about the IU men's soccer mystique.\nAfter going to games at the Bill my freshman and sophomore year and reading of Jerry Yeagley's success when he retired after winning his (and the program's) sixth national title in 2004, I saw how special the program is.\nHad it not been for the Indiana Daily Student and the IU men's soccer team, I would have never made my first visits to cities such as Los Angeles for the national championship and St. Louis for the Missouri Athletic Club Hermann Trophy presentation, in which Danny O'Rourke capped off his career by winning the Hermann Trophy -- college soccer's Heisman.\nAfter covering a program which the entire United States soccer community looks to as a model, I felt honored to have covered people like Freitag, O'Rourke and Yeagley.\nAnd because of their friendly personalities, I was fortunate enough to win the National Soccer Coaches Association of America Student Division Award in 2004 and 2005 -- the first two years of the student division.\nFor all of you underclassmen, non-students, and future students (including my brother Eric, who will become a Hoosier in August) -- if you've yet to attend an IU men's soccer game, you are really missing out.\nEven if you are not a soccer fan or sports fan, get out and try something new in your time at IU -- whatever it may be. Your four (or five) years go fast, and trust me -- you will be glad you got out and experienced something new. I know I am.