Stories I loved to tell in 2016

In my favorite self-serving exercise each year, I look back at some of my favorite stories to tell in the preceding calendar year. Here are the highlights from 2016:

The Family Business (Special section on the Watt Family). This is an idea I had ever since the NFL schedule was released in April, and I saw that the Houston Texans would be coming to Lambeau Field. Obviously, we’ve written a ton about JJ Watt’s ascension into the NFL, but I really wanted to create a special section that approached every angle of the story, from his official charity and the success of his brothers to the rise of Pewaukee’s football program concurrently and even something small about the three of them all winning shot put state titles. What better opportunity than his first game as a pro in Wisconsin? The project was put in jeopardy when JJ was injured early in the season, meaning he wouldn’t get to face the Packers in early December, but there were still some great stories to tell. TJ Watt, the youngest of the three brothers, had a monster year with the University of Wisconsin football team, and Derek is in his first NFL season, so that kept an element of timeliness, as did the milestone of PHS football reaching Level 4 of the playoffs for the first time. This is a project of which I’m deeply proud.

68 Degrees of Separation (NCAA Tournament preview). I was sitting at our annual newspaper convention listening to a speech about reaching local audiences in different ways, and my mind drifted to this concept, which isn’t exactly a novel approach but something I hadn’t tried before. I sought out a Wisconsin connection to every one of the 68 teams in the NCAA Tournament – some were obvious, some were interesting and some were ridiculous and meant to be humorous. I wound up emailing several schools for their input, and many graciously wrote back even in the midst of a crazy week (the weeks leading up to the Big Dance). My personal favorites were connecting Fairleigh-Dickinson to bowling and Butler to Bob Uecker and an old TV show – two of the more preposterous links. It obviously wasn’t the most local thing I did this year, but I had a lot of fun, and I think it looks great online.

Tri and Tri Again: Waukesha’s Jorgensen hopes all good things, including one big second chance, come in threes . I was also proud of our Wisco to Rio content for the summer Olympics, which featured a number of stories about area athletes and other connections to the games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. I even interviewed my pastor (a native Brazilian) for one segment. But naturally, the best part was chatting with Waukesha South graduate Gwen Jorgensen prior to her competition in the triathlon (having some fun with it and riffing on the three-pronged aspect of her discipline), then watching her win the first U.S. women’s gold in the event.

Err ball: Where the WIAA (but mostly everybody else) went wrong. In early 2016, Wisconsin high-school athletics came under a national spotlight when Ricardo Arguello of the Post-Crescent wrote a story about an athlete in Hilbert reacting with a profanity to an issue of guidelines by the WIAA restricting fan behavior at games. Reader reaction to her suspension also brought under the microscope the tenets that indicated fans should avoid certain hallowed cheers like “air ball” and “fun-da-men-tals,” itemizing those as bad sportsmanship. I hope my column shed some light on the overblown nature of the firestorm, one that I don’t think has dramatically impacted the prep sports scene a year later. For a while, the WIAA was the butt of jokes around the country, mostly unfairly – but it was certainly an intriguing time to be at the center of the maelstrom.

Perez-idential Address: Kettle Moraine’s Julio Perez wins state title in discus. Really, this is just an excuse to allow me another chance to gush about how much I love the state track and field event in LaCrosse, which I’ve covered the past several years. I have to give credit to Chris Bucher, then a sports reporter with the Waukesha Freeman, for mentioning that he was going to wander across the stadium to the discus area at the moment when he did, because I tagged along and got to see the final throws from competitors trying to catch an earlier throw by Kettle Moraine’s Julio Perez. They couldn’t match him, and Perez officially won the gold mere seconds before inclement weather rolled in and forced a delay of the proceedings. Who knows what happens if the other contenders get that lengthy delay to relax before their final throw? It was all part of a surprising strong showing by the Kettle Moraine boys and another great experience overall for area athletes at state track.

State final becomes a reality for Arrowhead baseball. I didn’t write the story for this one – that honor goes to Evan Frank, who traveled to Fox Cities Stadium with me to watch as Arrowhead looked to win the spring baseball championship in its second season since switching from summer baseball. What I did get to do was experiment with Snapchat, part of the video package that you’ll find here. I think you’ll find a lot more video on our site going forward now that we’re part of the Gannett model, and it’s a lot of fun to tell the story in this manner.

View to a Thrill: Oconomowoc’s Schlundt a witness to a wild finish. I’m a pretty huge Wisconsin Badgers basketball fan, and I was jumping wildly in my friend’s living room March 20 when Badgers guard Bronson Koenig hit a 3-pointer at the buzzer to stun Xavier in the second round of the Big Dance. Even before I sat down, I told my friends I was going to try and generate a story on our local connection to the team, former Oconomowoc High School and St. John’s Northwestern Military Academy player T.J. Schlundt. Schlundt doesn’t get a ton of playing time as a walk-on, but he’s part of what makes the NCAA Tournament so great – the kids jumping off the bench in celebration. Sure enough, he was willing to talk, and we traced back some of his favorite memories wearing the Cardinal and White.

Arrowhead’s Amann to appear on American Ninja Warrior. I’m going to be honest, I’m not a fan of American Ninja Warrior. But wow, it must be quite the show (or, perhaps more correctly, Taylor Amann must already have quite the fan base). The thing about this article that was so great was the volume of readership and thousands of Facebook shares for something that I thought was a fairly straightforward (though very cool) story about a former area athlete appearing on the popular reality competition. Amann, a standout pole vaulter at Arrowhead High School and at the University of Wisconsin, competed with other Badgers against Big Ten teams and won the whole dang college competition in shows that aired Dec. 13 and Dec. 20.