Loose Talk: The Editors’ Take
Half a score and seven years ago, the foundations for the greatest Exonian sports board to grace this planet were endowed upon this six septillion kilogram rock that we call home. Hailing from all across the East /Coast, from the northern tundras of Maine to the southern plains of Georgia, three future sportswriters were born into families that devoutly followed the world of professional sports.
As the years went on, the trio were molded and formed by the rises and falls of their teams. The Northerners were witnesses to the dawn of one of the greatest quarterbacks in the history of football, the rise and fall of a Big Three who won an NBA title and the end of a historical World Series drought. Meanwhile, the Southerner missed the one professional championship in his city’s history, saw his hockey franchise sold to Canada and was let down time and time again in the playoffs across every sport. Nevertheless, they all made their ways to the prestigious Phillips Exeter Academy, and after years of slaving away for The Exonian, they all ascended to the role of sports editor.
To say things were rough in the Sports section when they took over would be the biggest understatement since the Apollo 13 crew said there was “a problem.” The layouts were ugly. The Up/Down was on the front page. But most importantly, there was no original content. The 137 Sports Editors knew that there was work to be done. They would no longer stand for the Sports section to be the joke that it had been in the past and be disrespected by everyone. The time for change had come.
It wasn’t easy in the beginning. There were many nights where we kept our beloved Editor-in-Chief Jack Hirsch and the rest of the Exectuive Board in the office until minutes before our 10 p.m. deadline. There were mornings where we made the walk of shame to the Exonian office at 5 to correct our mistakes from the night before. However, week by week, the Sports section made it quite clear that they would not stand for the lax standards from the past. They would not rest until every ad was perfectly in place, every picture was fit perfectly to its frame and every last drop of patience was drained from Hirsch. By the time the end of the year was rolling around, the sports section was on fire. It was a well-oiled machine that churned out quality edition after quality edition. And then, the unthinkable challenge was placed before them: the grad edition.
For every other section, the graduation edition of The Exonian meant that they were responsible for 8-12 pages as opposed to the usual 2-4. For sports, their workload went from the standard 3 page editions to a monstrous three-section project that spanned over twenty-five pages. Weekend nights were spent under the flickering lights of The Exonian office instead of out at Spring Fling. Long, grueling man hours were spent slaving to the tune of Lil Dicky’s album stuck on repeat. And yet, on graduation Sunday, there we were: underslept, perhaps, but with a finished product nonetheless. Sitting here now, a year after our inagural issue, I know that I speak for all the sports editors (and basically all of the Upper Board) when I say: this really, really sucked.
If you ever walk into The Exonian office on a Wednesday, you’d find something that can only be described as a “controlled chaos” at best and “absolute havoc” at worst. Articles due Sunday night are still being worked on, the Executive Board is telling the various sections that they need to scrap some of their content and everyone’s far from finished. News is whining because they aren’t getting the preferential treatment they want, opinions is complaining that the articles that they’re editing are boring or reflect ridiculous viewpoints, humor is annoyed that they can’t compare the deans to various forms of kelp, we in the sports section are telling the news editors that no, we aren’t turning down the music and life...is generally pretty chill, honestly.
But the thing is, as annoying as Wednesdays may be, we’re all proud of what we do. No matter how long it takes, there’s nothing like taking a look at your finished product and knowing that people across the nation—and hypothetically the world—are reading what you’ve created. Thank you to everyone who has read our content for the past year, it’s been a blast publishing for you. While we may not miss the huge time sink on Wedneday afternoons, we’’ll miss the time spent with people who we mostly tolerate and the shared pride of creating something great. It’s been a good run, 137.