Student reporter’s paradise

/ May 2, 2015

“What happens when you fly over Los Angeles?” the stewardess asked me. Yeah, me, I thought, attempting to come up with a winning reply. “You land, I hope,” I said, lamely, not being quite that slick yet and never to see her smiling face again as I was getting ready in 1978 to begin another adventure this University of Maryland junior could barely believe.

“You see L.A.,” she said, scurrying to finish her tasks before we indeed descended upon the land of glitz and glamour and the campus of UCLA, where this lone traveler was heading after March break to catch up with the women’s basketball team that represented my college as it played in the AIAW Final Four.

What luck I had. After transfering to the huge university in College Park, Md., from the tiny state school in upstate New York to receive my bachelor’s degree in journalism, I’d already forged my way into the mid-circle of students at the Diamondback, the independent campus daily that ran from advertising dollars.

In the fall, I’d covered the men’s soccer team as my beat, traveling with them down through the other schools in the Atlantic Coast Conference. They were a mid-league squad, but I learned lots as they won some and lost some.

After that season, I was given the women’s basketball team as my beat. And that was worth a hot damn. Led by star guard Tara Heiss and directed sharp coach Chris Weller, the Terrapins won loads. The women were smart and talented and played with great chemistry. Senior captain Jane Zivalich and freshmen Kris Kirchner and Betsy Bailey meshed, and the two power forward Debbies, Stuart and Stewart, owned the rebounding game. Zivalich told me that Weller had them sharpen their games by scrimmaging against the best men’s instramural teams on campus, and the women would beat these former high school stars regularly. Heiss and Kirchner would later make the 1980 U.S. Olympic team — the one that didn’t play in the Olympics because of the American boycott.

They were fun to watch, too, and big crowds started to come to Cole Field House to cheer them on. Weller

They came in second during the ACC regular season title at 5-1, but won the ACC Tournament on the campus of North Carolina State in Raleigh, N.C. I was piling up clips, experience and killer road trips.

The won in the early rounds of the AIAW Tournament. (That’s the national association that governed women’s major college sports before the NCAA took over both genders.) The Regionals were in Cleveland, Miss. I went to the banks for the first time, and with Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn on my mind, took off my shoes and socks and stuck my feet in the Mighty Mississippi. On the basketball court, the Terrapins defeated The Lady Vols of Tenneesee, coached by a woman who’d become a legend, Pat Summitt, and then Valdosta State of Georgia to qualify for the Final Four.

I went home for Spring Break and broke the news to my parents that it was going to be a short one.

Palm trees!
Girls!
Beaches!

It was a 20-year-old’s California dream.

Once I landed and found the hotel the Diamondback’s business department had put me up in — the head staffer ther was a hired professional, but the rest of that staff was students training for the real world on the business and adversting side, much as we were on the journalism end — I found Diamondback photographer Michael Oakes and Dave Lilling of campus radio station WMUC, and off we went to the beach.

Me and Mike Oakes, Los Angeles, 1976.

Me and Mike Oakes, Los Angeles, 1978.

Dave Lilling and I, Los Angeles, 1976.

Dave Lilling and I, Los Angeles, 1978
.

Two of the reporters covering the team for the Baltimore Sun, Kent Baker and Bill Free, found out where we were staying and came over from their hotel. That was another perk about working on the Diamondbck that helped my career after graduation. I was better with journalists than with steweardesses, thankfully. I became a pro at networking by covering the Terp teams side by side with veteran reporters at the Sun and the Washington Post. Baker and Free and we student journalists enjoyed the sun and had a beer by the pool, talking about the upcoming tournament.

We went to the campus of UCLA with them, too, walking around the outside of the famous Pauley Pavilion. I tried to look through the doors to see the championship banners won by the Bruins men’s teams coached by the legendary John Wooden. I got goosebumps.

The Terrapins did their job in the national semifinals, defeating Wayland Baptist. Yes, there were a lot of interesting squads from little schools playing great basketball those days. UCLA, playing on its home court, beat one of those in the othe semifinal. Led by star Ann Meyers, sister of men’s star David Meyer, the Lady Bruins beat Montclair State of New Jersey and the biggest scorer in the sport that year, hot shooting Carol Blazejowski.

I could stay two more days in the sun.

Alas, the home team, with a full Pauley Pavilion crowd behind it, beat the Terps 90-74 in the championship game. Maryland finished the season 27-4.

I interviewed the sad players and coach, taking the Maryland angle for the Maryland campus daily. Tara Heiss told me, “We sure picked a bad time to play bad.” Dave Kindred, sports columnist for the Washington Post, was talking to the UCLA players in their locker room, and missed Heiss. He asked me if I had talked to Heiss and caught what she had said. I told him.

When I returned home to the apartment at the (P)Residential Park complex I shared with Twenty and Aggo, they pulled out a cake tin stowed away on top of the kitchen for months. In the beginning of the season, they’d asked me how I thought this women’s team I’d been assigned to cover would do. I wrote my prediction on a piece of paper and stuck it inside a cake tin, empty because we’d just polished off a tasty one sent down in the mail by Twenty’s mother Ida Mae.

On the paper it said, “Lose to UCLA in the national championship game.” The location of the Final Four had been set at least a year

In advance, you see. I had done my homework.

The next school year, I got a part-time job working in the sports department of the Washington Post, beginning by answering phones and taking down high school box scores. When he came into the office, Dave Kindred knew who I was. I advanced to working three or four weekly shifts as a copy aide and reporting and writing high school games and an occasional feature. The week before graduation, I was interviewed for the sports editor’s job at The Prince George’s Journal in suburban Maryland. My first day on the job was the day after graduation in May 1979.

Have you followed women’s basketball, and if so, which team is your favorite, and why? Have you ever taken a fantastic trip tied to work, and if so, where did you go and what did you do? Did you ever network with experienced people in your field when you were young and see it pay off sooner or later, and if so, who and how?

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59 thoughts on “Student reporter’s paradise”

  2. Good memories for a young reporter. It would be nice if your girls had won though. Sigh, it would have been nice if my horse had won yesterday’s Derby too. I think he’s still looking for the starting gate.

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      • I wish he had too bro. He was a 44-1 odds, so that would have been a pot of money. My “friend” chose him for me, but not sure which one she picked for herself. And I told her I wanted a winner. HA!

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  5. My gosh, Mark–so much fun and travel most of us don’t get to do! Get down with your bad self, in your ripped blue jean shorts, following women’s basketball and double Debbies. Too bad about the Olympics that year. I knew few people at 20 with such ambitions. And absolutely none who could drink a beer legally at that age, since that changed years later. 🙂 I don’t know nothin’ ’bout no women’s basketball, but I know a cool name when I hear it: Blazejowski.

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    • I may have peaked too early, Kerbey. I mean, I wasn’t a teen genius or anything, but I got cranking pretty young because I was so singleminded about my professonal goals. And then I got the jobs … And had even more magic in music journalism … then … you know.

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  6. Whew! No I never did follow a Woman’s B’t Ball team. Although due to the Raptors, I like the sport better than ever,
    I have taken many fab trips for work… mostly to L.A. & N.Y.C.. I went there to meet and fit actors for shows I was designing the costumes for, or to do publicity after the shoot was over.
    I got to go to Charles Bronson’s home in Malibu, which is a stand out memory. Doing the publicity for “Hendrix” is also a life memory.

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  7. What a great adventure, Mark. Journalism…ahh, the road not taken. It came in second to teaching. Turns out, I ended up with a career in writing anyway…just less creative and more technical. Thanks for sharing the memories; the 70’s were a special time ! ☺ Van

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  8. Mark I love reading about the beginning of your career, how exciting it must have been to cover those games and go to California! Nice cut-offs by the way 😉 I remember wearing a pair at a campground in Ontario some time in the 70s. Walking down the beach one day, a man yelled after me, “I see a shark bit off the back of your jeans!” ❤
    Diana xo

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  11. I have to add, you have not changed as much as you think! I would recognize you in these photos, Mark. What a wonderful experience and how it made you come to where you are, that is another story! Smiles!

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  13. Throwback tour this morning for me, Chum, as I catch up on a few posts. These are some of your best. I like learning more about how you became the writer you so effortlessly are now. Women’s basketball has always been a favorite of mine. I sense so much joy from you when you write about sports of any kind. Its in your heart.

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  15. Another great throwback from you Mike! That must have been a thrilling adventure for you! I want to say that it recalls a movie I watched about journalists in the 70s but the title eludes me!

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  17. enjoyed reading this adventure – and crazy how you predicted the loss like that – and this zinger was what I was thinking of when I saw teams get knocked out of the running during this last March Madness….
    “We sure picked a bad time to play bad.”

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  18. Wow Mark, you really moved up fast in your chosen profession – rubbing shoulders with the big guys in university (surrounded by a bevy of no doubt fine looking women) , then directly into an editor’s job straight from school. That’s an amazing tale. You did some major networking while your contemporaries’ mothers were still doing their washing.

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  19. what a living dream at that age. isn’t it interesting how one thing leads you to another? love the pic of the two of you on the bridge, looks like a still from ‘napoleon dynamite,’ only better –

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    • Yeah, that was a dream for a 20-year-old college guy, work and a little play and networking all rolled into one on somebody else’s dime, Beth. ‘Napoleon Dynamite,’ only better. Now that’s an observation I shall love forever! Thank you, my friend, from me and Pedro. ❤

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