Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Seeks Permanent McDonald County Sportswriter

McDonald County Press, which is as terrific a newspaper as I’ve ever been a part of.

Part of the credit for that goes to the sportswriting of the great Rick Peck, with whom I had the privilege of working for several years until he retired last summer. It’s been great seeing Rick at nearly every sporting event I’ve been to so far.

Many thanks to Al Gaspeny, a former sports editor of the Morning News in Northwest Arkansas and the Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville, for covering Mustang athletics this past fall and through December. Al did a great job for us before moving on to other ventures. He and I made the trip to West Plains together back in November to cover the Mustangs’ playoff game there. That was a lot of fun.

This brings us to the last two months. I’ve had a lot of fun.

I’ve gotten the chance to cover McDonald County basketball and wrestling, meet lots of new people, cover a new (to me) sport and get a bit reinvigorated.

Many thanks to basketball coaches Brandon Joines and Sean Crane for the many questions about games, scorebooks and helping me understand how conferences and districts work in Missouri High School athletics. It’s a bit different than Arkansas.

A special thanks to MCHS wrestling coach Josh Factor, who has spent numerous sessions on the phone and in person, explaining the ins and outs of wrestling — a sport I’ve never covered until now. Also, thanks to MCHS student Griffin Schutten for the awesome photos he took at the state wrestling tournament a couple of weeks ago.

And last but not least, thanks to McDonald County athletics director Bo Bergen for everything.

To the spring sports coaches, you can be expecting to hear from me very soon, and I’m looking forward to covering those sports over the next few months.

The Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette is looking for a permanent sportswriter to cover McDonald County but, until then, it’s going to be a lot of me, some of our guy Bennett Horne, the new managing editor in Bella Vista, some of Randy Moll, managing editor of the Westside Eagle Observer, and maybe a few others from time to time. Certainly, we’ll do the best we can.

McDonald County sports is a huge part of our newspaper and that will not change one bit.