It was under the glow of the golden dome at Notre Dame when I think I first realized just how amazing sports journalism could be. I was a freshman, and I was working my first beat, women’s soccer, for the Herald. For some reason, the paper trusted a freshman with just more than a month of college experience to travel with the Lady Toppers.

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“Board votes to keep football.” It’s a simple headline from a special edition of the Herald on May 1, 1992, but it tells the story. On April 30 of that year, the Board of Regents narrowly decided to keep the Topper football program alive. Fourteen years later, Nov.

Battle. It’s one of the most overused words in sports writing. People battle for the ball, or they battle for the victory. The word is used so often that people become desensitized to what a battle really is. The United States has hundreds of thousands of soldiers throughout the globe fighting battles, sacrificing their lives.