Sports have always held a strange place in my life.
Like many kids my age, I grew up wanting to be the next Ken Griffey, Jr. Unfortunately, I had the athleticism of a chicken with two left feet. Despite the efforts to become a respectable baseball player (my mom even read “Ron Polk’s Baseball Playbook” in an attempt to help with my swing), I was destined to spend a significant amount of time watching from the bench. 
It was in those McKee Park dugouts where I first started making observations about the game as somewhat of an outsider. When I got to college, I started pursuing opportunities to publish my outsider observations of the games I watched.
After interning at the Starkville Daily News in the fall of 2009 and covering local high school sports, I was fortunate enough to begin writing for The Reflector in the spring of 2010. This is where many of my best college memories happened.
I was able to help tell the story of Mississippi State, something I took a lot of pride in. Whether it was the highs of a nine-win football season or the lows of a basketball team falling apart, things were never boring. Most fellow graduating students witnessed the athletic department (and the university as a whole) take on a sense of pride that had not been seen in over a decade.
I have been in Starkville all 21 years of my life, and I have never seen this much excitement surrounding MSU athletics. Even at a time when most university departments have faced budget cuts, an $11 million basketball facility has been built, a $25 million football facility is on its way up and $86 million in bonds have been approved to expand Davis Wade Stadium. Not that those are necessarily bad things; they are just part of the strange balance between the academic and athletic sides of a university; something I tried to figure out as best I could during my time here.
This job also had its more light-hearted moments, like running into Herm Edwards and Craig James in the men’s room or riding an escalator with SEC Commissioner Mike Slive. I had no business being grouped together with respected national media members, yet there I was, looking down at the press pass with my name on it.
It is easy to get cynical when covering sports. I can only write about so many baskets scored, field goals kicked or home runs hit. But when I think back to what sports have meant to me growing up, I know it is more than that. There is a reason I can go into vivid detail about the first game I went to at Davis Wade Stadium (when MSU upset No. 3 Florida in 2000) or broiling in the Mississippi sun with my dad when the Diamond Dogs clinched a College World Series berth in 2007.
Watching overgrown world-class athletes smash into each other in an organized fashion means a lot to the people of Starkville. It is a part of who we are both as a town and as a university.
My time to leave this town and university is quickly approaching. Like most graduates, I will miss everything I liked about MSU and eventually look back at these four years as some of the best of my life.
But for now, I am just thankful I was able to help tell the story of a place and its people that have meant so much to me. Thanks for following along.