Merry Christmas to all. And to all a modified goodbye.
After 38 years with the Dayton Daily News sports department, I'mretiring from the organization on a full-time basis.
I was a tough very decision as most you know who are in the samesituation. Should I go out now at age 62 while my wife and I are ingood health and enjoy other pursuits? Or with the economy a bitshaky should wait until 65 or maybe a little older and hope for moresolid financial footing.
In the end, go now was the choice. There is no guarantee theeconomy or one's health will be any better in three or four years.
As we've seen the last few years, there are no real retirementsin sports.
I'll still be around on a freelance basis writing for Neighborssports, the regular sports section and DaytonDailyNews.com.
For 25 years or more, our valued readers have seen the same namesthroughout the sports pages or online -- Bucky Albers (now retired),Tom Archdeacon, Marc Katz, Ron Jackson, Chick Ludwig, Hal McCoy,Marc Pendleton and Greg Simms.
Add the 'newcomers' with less than 20 years such as Mark Gokavi,Doug Harris, Sean McClelland and Greg Billing, plus Neighbors sportsveterans Dave Lamb and Mickey Zezzo, and you've got a very talentedgroup of writers who know the area and the readers.
Reasons vary as to why we've all stayed so long even though otheropportunities have come along.
A major factor for most, including me, was we covered majorevents.
The goal of every sports writer is to cover a major college orpro team and be assigned to the World Series, Super Bowl, Olympicsor World Cup.
There are aren't a lot of papers where, within a two to three-hour drive, you get a chance to cover major league baseball, theNFL, the NBA, the NHL, Major League Soccer, major auto races(NASCAR, Indy 500), PGA and LPGA events, good minor league baseball,Division I football and basketball with Dayton, Wright State, OhioState and Miami, great NCAA Division III and NAIA programs, and highschool teams that compete for state champions in almost every sport.
The last 30-plus years have been a great era for local andregional sports. I won't bore you with a menu of backin-the-dayreferences.
But I'm glad I was here to see and write about: the Big RedMachine; the glory years of basketball and track in the 11-team CityLeague; Edwin Moses becoming a world-class hurdler and citizen; allthe Olympic athletes from this area in the 1980s and early '90s;Chris Nelloms vs. Robert Smith in the 1990 Division I boys statetrack meet; Ron Harper in his college basketball career at MiamiUniversity, the Indy 5000 when it was THE auto race; being aroundclass college coaches and ADs like Don Donoher, Tom Frericks andMike Kelly at the University of Dayton, Dave Maurer and Larry Hunterat Wittenberg and Dick Shrider and Jerry Pierson at MiamiUniversity; girls high school basketball -- thanks to very dedicatedAAU coaches -- develop teams and individuals as good as any in thecountry; and the privilege of working with hundreds of qualitycoaches and administrators.
That's doesn't mean there aren't plenty of great sporting eventsto come and good stories to be written.
I've edited the Neighbors sports pages for the past seven years.My goal has been to provide a good mixture of local youth, highschool and adult sports, and to provide news of how college athletesfrom your neighborhood are performing.
Many ideas have worked, some have not. But the experience as mademe a much better writer/editor and provided a number of valuabletools I will use in my freelance writing efforts.
I thank all of you who have been loyal readers during my full-time years with the Dayton Daily News and look forward to tellingyour stories in the future.
