By Cory Tell ’14

At Newark Academy there is a wide range of talents and interests amongst the students. Some kids are adept at playing an instrument, some kids are skilled in physics or in a foreign language, and I go home and write a sports blog. While it may not appear to be as intensive as building a Tesla coil, running a blog is not nearly as simple as it may seem.

A blog requires constant progress. Since March 7^th of last year when I began writing on Cory Tell All Sports, I have been continuously making dramatic changes and improvements. Not only have I altered my writing over the course of my 221 articles, but I have also added multiple other layers to my site in order to make it as entertaining and informative a blog as possible. In addition to the articles that I write, each day I update the biggest headlines in sports, the games to watch, the key game results, a fact of the day, a poll question, and a list of my sports tweets.

The hardest part about keeping my blog up-to-date and writing articles is not thinking of ideas to discuss, that’s the easy part, it’s finding some time during the busy school week to have an opportunity to write. As everybody knows, our school has a very rigorous curriculum, and if you are playing a sport as well, it is nearly impossible to have free time during the week to sit down for a few hours and write on a blog. Our evenings are dominated with homework, and if you are a junior or senior, with SAT/ACT preparation. I don’t have the ability to watch hours of games and then blog about them. But I really enjoy my writing, so I always try to find a way to make the time to keep myself updated with the happenings of the sports world.

I am fortunate to have a crazy, over-the-top, freakish obsession with sports. Not too many kids have a baseball card collection that spans nearly 60 years through 3 generations, where the cards are divided into teams like the old Washington Senators and the players are arranged in alphabetical order. I have also printed out thousands of sports papers to educate myself on the history of all different sports. And even though knowing that Brett Favre’s first ever pass completion was to himself will definitely not help me get an “A” in English, my love of sports fuels my passion to constantly write about the latest developments in the game.

Although major sports agencies like ESPN and CBS Sports have a ton of staff members and the ability to send reporters all around the country, my blog provides a unique and different type of sports reporting. The aim of the writing on ESPN.com is to attract as many viewers as possible, and that often means that most of the articles will be about the teams in the major sports markets like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Boston. However, I have the luxury of being able to extensively write about whatever sports topics I feel that people may be interested in. While ESPN is constantly writing articles about whether Tim Tebow is eating turkey or ham for lunch, and how that affects his QB battle with Mark Sanchez, I can write an analysis on the impressive play of Seattle Seahawks rookie quarterback Russell Wilson and not worry about captivating an audience in the major news cities. Also, whereas major sports sources provide quality game recaps and are constantly breaking news on athletic developments around the world, my blog solely provides analysis and I don’t have to worry about reporting the news. Mainstream sports agencies deliver important up-to-date scores and news, so blogs like Cory Tell All Sports are a great compliment to their reporting.