Autumn is falling away as fast as the leaves on our trees, and with the change in weather will come a change in sports seasons.
I’ve been covering high school and collegiate football for 15 seasons now, starting in 2009 stringing for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette to this Friday, and hopefully more this year, now as publisher of the Cassville Democrat.
Football itself hardly changes. In my days, I have covered two state championship teams — Harding Academy in Searcy, Ark., in 2012, and that purple school just north of us in 2016. I also followed Cassville through it’s Class 3 runner-up finish in 2019.
As I said in last week’s column, there is an ebb and flow to sports. In football, I’ve covered undefeated teams and winless teams, state title seasons and rebuilding seasons, and that ebb and flow of fall Friday nights has become its own sort of constant for me.
As I was reflecting this week on my probably hundreds of thousands of words written about prep football, my attention turned inward — Friday nights for me personally don’t ebb, they just flow.
My very first stringer gig was two small class schools in Little Rock, Episcopal Collegiate and some opponent I can’t remember. What I do remember is how I led that story with a feature-like description of the setting, as Episcopal is backdropped by the old train station and the tall buildings of downtown.
Much to my horror, my 800 words got cut in half down to the bare bones of “this score happened here” and “this player ran for that many yards.”
These days, I get to write as featurey as I want without threat of editing a beautiful article into a box score.
Fast forward to my time as a sports editor in Searcy in 2012, where I was largely responsible for covering at least five schools in White County, Ark. That was so complicated it took me a couple minutes just now to remember them all.
Those days were as late as they come, with me filing stories and designing the next day’s pages into the wee hours of the morn, then dragging myself home to only the company of my rescue cat, Sophie.
In 2014, I found myself in Cassville, still just me and my feline friend. Somehow, I knew I landed in the right spot. Cassville has the same colors as my alma mater of Little Rock Central, and the “C” logo was so similar I was not comfortable wearing my Central beanie in late season for fear of being accused a homer.
Most of my Fridays here had the same routine: attend the game, take photos, do interviews, write a recap and send to our designer. After a few years, design also fell into my lap, but I didn’t mind.
Many of those nights included meet-ups at The Bayou or Memories at that town up north, giving greater sense of company and community than I’d had previously. Sophie wasn’t a fan of my after-work fraternizing, though I could always appease her with a little bit of tuna.
In the last five years, my whole landscape has changed. Sophie passed in January 2016, and I bought a house the following year and got a rescue dog, Baxter.
At that time, nothing met the energy of a 15-week-old blackmouth cur who had been left alone for three hours. My investment in a kennel was a wise one.
We had two years together before the landscape shifted again — the most beautiful scenery yet.
By football season 2019, I had already planned to propose to Jordan, and she and her 4-year-old were living with me and Baxter full-time. It added a layer of joy to the house and, had that not been such an exciting season, I would have been more inclined to spend Fridays at home.
I missed out on a lot of “girls nights” with popcorn and movies, though I was dubbed a sorcerer for always knowing which movies the girls had rented. Jordan eventually learned I get an email each time she rented one and my sorcerer reign ended.
These days, the house is even busier than ever. We now have two dogs, another cat, an 8-year-old and a 2-year-old.
In only a few years, my Fridays have gone from just me, my pooch and my Xbox to my walking into the door to instant shouts of, “Dada! Dada!” and, “Oh my gosh, Dad, guess what movie me and mom watched tonight?” — not to mention the dogs doing backflips by the laundry room and yipping for their kibble.
As frantic as it is, I give my wife a kiss and settle in. Young, stringer me in 2009 would have never imagined me here and now, but I can’t think of a feature story any more beautiful.
Here’s to more amazing Fridays this year and beyond, both on the field and off it!
Kyle Troutman has served as the editor of the Cassville Democrat since 2014 and became Publisher in 2023. He was named William E. James/Missouri Outstanding Young Journalist for daily newspapers in 2017, and he won a Golden Dozen Award from ISWINE in 2022. He may be reached at 417-847-2610 or ktroutman@cassville- democrat.com.
