Jarod Hamilton: Talking sports has always been my playing field

When I was 13 years old and didn't make my middle school basketball team, I figured I wasn't going to become a pro athlete. In my opinion, the next best thing was being a sports journalist.

Although it took me until my teenage years to realize I wanted to make a career in sports journalism, sports have been the center of my world, outside my faith and my loved ones, since I can remember.

I chose watching ESPN instead of cartoons, exclusively playing sports video games, and spending countless days going into a Wikipedia rabbit hole as I would try to read about an athlete's life story or a sporting event before clicking on the next hyperlink.

Whether it was predicting games and helping my dad win nearly $10,000 in bets (true story) as a second grader or making sure that I won every sports debate at the lunch table in high school -- talking sports has always and will always be my field of play.

During my second semester of my freshman year at North Carolina A&T State is when I finally put all this knowledge to the test and joined the school newspaper (the A&T Register). I worked my way up from a contributor to editor-in-chief of the newspaper by the time I was a senior, where I led us to a Best in Show award as one of the five best college newspapers in the state.

If you still don’t understand how serious I take sports despite not being an athlete, maybe this quick little story will help explain the lengths I will go to do my job.

In 2019, N.C. A&T had clinched its third straight Celebration Bowl appearance (the HBCU National Championship for those unaware). At the time, I was theScore (sports) editor in need of a tonsillectomy, something I had scheduled the week of the Celebration Bowl.

Now, I could've told everyone I was having surgery four days before the game and stayed home, but I would've been depriving myself and another reporter the opportunity of covering a bowl game in Atlanta (which would’ve been justifiable). I decided to do what most athletes do ─ suck it up and do my job.

My mom and doctors weren’t excited about the idea of me driving my 1996 Toyota Camry (which was four years older than me and ready to die on me at any moment) from Charlotte to Greensboro to pick up my colleague to Atlanta to cover the game back and then back again. But I didn’t care.

The game was exciting and ended with the Aggies winning 64-44 over Alcorn State.

I rarely talked on the trip in an effort to save my voice for on the field postgame interviews. Which I did as N.C. A&T's Blue and Gold Marching Machine band (one of the best in the country) was playing in the background. It was no easy feat, but I had a job to do.

And even though my car would die somewhere in South Carolina off a freeway exit on the way back, it was worth it.

Some of my other journalism experience include interning with both Scripps in the summer of 2020 and with the Tuscaloosa News through the Sports Journalism Institute in the summer of 2021.

I just completed the rookie season (I use sports phrases in every facet of my life ─ just a heads up) of my career covering high school sports with the Jackson Sun newspaper in Jackson, Tennessee.

I wrote everything from athletes overcoming life-threatening illnesses to getting exclusive home access as five-star players signed their national letters of intent to players saving themselves and siblings from drowning in a car submerged in filthy pond water.

I am forever grateful for the opportunity that SJI gave me when they selected me to be an intern, and I'm equally grateful to Tom Kreager and Chris Thomas, who gave me my first job. I am far and away better than when I graduated in May 2021, and I know that I will only continue to grow working with Gabe DeArmond covering Mizzou.

I wasn’t hitting home runs out of the gate when I started last year, and I don’t expect to be hitting many in my first couple weeks in Columbia either, but like before, I will find my groove.

I’m 23 years old, so as a journalist and a young adult, I don’t and will not pretend to have it all figured out. There’s always room for improvement. Now, because I am 23, I’m not going to shy away from that. So, if you see me integrating pop culture slang or references ─ just go along with it. I’ll make sure to explain it to you.

I’m an Army brat and I was born in Fort Riley, Kansas ─ I mean kansas (see, learning lessons here already). But I’ve lived in Kentucky, California and Charlotte, North Carolina which is where I spent most of my life.

I still have a lot to learn about Mizzou, but I am happy to be here and ready to work.