After nearly five years, it’s time to say goodbye

Kevin Pomeroy
Posted 12/18/14

I never played cowboys and Indians. I never pretended I was going to the moon, or messed around with a fake tool set. I didn’t care very much about trucks or blocks or legos.

I cared about …

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After nearly five years, it’s time to say goodbye

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I never played cowboys and Indians. I never pretended I was going to the moon, or messed around with a fake tool set. I didn’t care very much about trucks or blocks or legos.

I cared about sports.

Really, that was all I cared about. I threw tennis balls into my garage door until the paint chipped away. I set up basketball hoops in every corner of my house. I pestered my dad to play catch with me until it was pitch black outside. I spent most of my time in elementary school drawing up football plays in a notebook.

Before I could write in cursive I was waking up at the crack of dawn to watch old black and white re-runs of 1950’s Home Run Derby episodes, with Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle and Harmon Killebrew. I checked out countless books from the library, digesting the history of the first Super Bowl like I was taking an SAT-level test on it the next day.

I cried when the Patriots lost the Super Bowl in 1997. I cried when they won the Super Bowl in 2002. I cried when the Red Sox were eliminated from the playoffs in 1995, 1999 and especially in 2003. I cried again when they won in 2004.

The first Halloween I really remember, I dressed up as Mo Vaughn.
I know I’m burying the lead here, but there’s a reason for it. I love sports, more than anything, and I want it to be clear just how hard this next paragraph is to write.

As of the end of this week, I’m leaving Beacon Communications. I’m leaving the newspaper industry as a whole, and I’m leaving sports writing behind. I’ve accepted a job in Denver to start a new career as an insurance broker, and I’m moving out to the city at the beginning of January.

Deciding to change careers was the most difficult decision I’ve ever had to make, bar none. I’m tearing up as I write this. For all of my adult life, specifically the past eight years, writing about sports is all I’ve known. It’s all I’ve wanted to know.

It was my dream job.

Not everyone gets to live their dream. I’m so grateful that I did.

Well, technically it was my second dream – somehow, playing shortstop for the Red Sox didn’t work out. Once I realized that wasn’t an option, I turned my attention to dream two – writing about my passion.

It’s been an incredibly fulfilling, rewarding and thrilling experience every step of the way. I’ve seen more and been a part of more than I could ever have imagined when I was that little boy throwing a tennis ball against the garage.

I’ve interviewed Coach K and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, covered high school athletes who now play in the NFL and seen enough truly amazing performances up close to last a lifetime.

I don’t want to hone in on any particular game or moment more than another, because I think that would be selling so many of the others short. Just know that I’ve cared about every game that I’ve covered and every game that I’ve written about, whether it was a cold field hockey game or a beautifully sunny baseball game.

I hope you’ve enjoyed it as much as I have.

Over the past four and a half years here at Beacon Communications, I’ve grown tremendously as a person and a writer (I hope), and I’m so thankful for the people who have made that possible along the way.

But, before I get to them – and I know some of this won’t make sense to a lot of you – I need to thank a few people who helped me make my way in this field before I even got here. I was a 19-year-old college student in Clemson, S.C., just looking for a way to get into the industry when a journalism professor named Phillip Randall took me under his wing and helped me hook on with the Greenville News, where I began covering high school football games on Friday nights.

A year later, a tremendous sports writer named Will Vandervort gave me an even greater chance, giving me an internship with a daily newspaper. Soon after that, Steven Bradley and Eric Sprott went out on a limb and hired me to the staff of that newspaper as a 20-year-old, giving me the opportunity to spread my wings and create memories that I will never, ever forget.

My next stop was right here, in Warwick, where former sports editor William Geoghegan and publisher John Howell brought in a kid fresh out of college, and trusted me to uphold the reputation and legacy of a paper that means so much to so many.

In William, I made a friend and a mentor. We worked together to revamp the sports section as a whole, creating the first-ever high school football podcast in this state, and adding a number of other features to help turn the section into, what I truly believe, is the best in Rhode Island.

In John, I found the best possible boss anyone could ask for. He allowed William and me the freedom to operate independently, to shape the face of Warwick, Cranston and Johnston sports as we saw fit. Without his belief that we could succeed, I don’t know that we would have.

I’ve met so many other truly great people right here. Walking into 1944 Warwick Avenue has been a pleasure nearly every day, and never a chore.

But more so than everyone I just listed, the person I need to thank the most is you – every single one of you who reads this newspaper.

You’ve been so gracious throughout my tenure. Nearly each time I’ve been a little bit down or frustrated with my work, I’ve received an email from somebody telling me that I’ve done a good job with a story, or that they really enjoyed a column.

You have no idea how much that means to me.

It’s that validation and the knowledge that you’re all out there reading, and enjoying, that has made this job a privilege. And I mean that from the bottom of my heart. It’s been a privilege covering the local sports scene here, from the players to the fans to the coaches to the parents to the administrators. Years from now, when I look back on this part of my life, it’s the people that I’ll remember most.

But it’s time for me to move on. The sports section will be in good hands with Matt Metcalf and whoever is hired to take my place – I’m sure of it. There are too many good people working here for there to be any drop-off.

And I’ll be monitoring it every step of the way. I might be three-quarters of the way across the country, but I’ll be checking the paper and checking the scores. It would be impossible not to – these communities and teams are now forever a part of my life.

Thank you, all of you, for allowing me the opportunity to live my dream.

Wish me luck in my next one.

Kevin Pomeroy is the sports editor at the Warwick Beacon. He can be reached at 732-3100 and kevinp@rhodybeat.com.

Comments

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  • JohnStark

    A weekly podcast designed to preview and promote upcoming high school football games is unheard of in New England. Well done, Kevin. You will be missed in a city where 3 of the 4 high schools could care less about interscholastic athletics.

    Saturday, December 20, 2014 Report this

  • allent

    Don't give it up. Write for your own blog on the side or write for bleacherreport

    Sunday, December 21, 2014 Report this

  • MMcGiveron

    JohnStark, let me guess, you are a supporter of Hendricken? Pretty easy to say that the rest of this great city's public education could care less about interscholastic athletics. Being a direct part of one of '3 of the 4 high schools', I can assure you that your opinion is way off base. But then again, it's easy to say that when the school you are supporting has a $13,225 a year tuition.

    Tuesday, December 23, 2014 Report this

  • JohnStark

    MMcGiveron: Actually, it is not my opinion, but rather the opinions shared with me by coaches at all three schools. Kevin Pomeroy has done an outstanding job of promoting athletics at the three schools, given the prevailing tide of apathy that surrounds these programs, especially on the boys' side. If you really believe that 14 kids on an indoor track team or 15 on a wrestling team is reflective of broad interest and promotion, so be it. Just know that a majority of athletes, and coaches in the state see such administrative apathy as a disservice to kids in those schools. That's not only "easy to say", but quite obvious. Closing a school would help. But somehow I don't see the city's wealth of caring professionals embracing that concept. Better to hope that the interscholastic league will invent Division 5 football or Division 4 basketball.

    Tuesday, December 23, 2014 Report this

  • MMcGiveron

    JohnStark : Considering I am a coach of a boys team at one of the three schools, I am guessing you did not seek the right coaches to seek an opinion from. Funny how you used track and wrestling as the baseline for your scale of promoting athletics. The problem with the overall decline in participation in sports in Warwick is a sharp decline in population (thus declining the enrollment at each school) and the fact that pre-HS sports participation is not becoming affordable for some. Combine that with stricter academic standards to be even able to participate, and you are obviously going to have some sort of decline. But to make such a broad statement as you made is a cheap shot to all the coaches in the this city that go out there, put their heart and sole into it, and try to make a difference.

    Funny again how you keep leaving Hendricken out of this whole thing. Wonder why? Having played against the school in the 90's in several major sports, I can assure you the Hendricken teams of the 90's would clean up against the teams of the present. So I guess because they get the numbers, that's ok. Even though the quality of play is down. But then again, it's hard not to get the numbers when you give scholarships to whoever you want for sports.

    Tuesday, December 23, 2014 Report this

  • JohnStark

    MMc: My comments were not meant as a cheap shot at the city's coaches, many of whom, indeed, pour their heart and soul into their programs. You may have noticed, however, that my comments referenced neither coaches nor athletes. That said, when was the last time Pilgrim or Vets hosted an outdoor track meet? Are you aware of other football games that were cancelled after a field was deemed "unplayable" at halftime? Was there another school in the state in 2013, other than Tollgate, that dressed 16 kids for a Thanksgiving game? Is it a concern that Vets has annual trouble fielding a hockey team? Sorry, it's not enrollment, which justifies D2 in both football and basketball. The last time I checked, the city's three hockey schools were a collective 2-12, losing to the likes of enrollment juggernauts Narragansett (which is ready to close) and No. Smithfield by a combined 21-1. Rather, interscholastic athletics is simply not a priority in the Warwick School Department. As a coach, ask yourself: "Does my AD see my program as an important ingredient in the culture of the school?" I'm told by multiple coaches in Warwick, the answer is an emphatic "No". So I've covered football, basketball, hockey, track. and wrestling. A little distorted, don't you think, to lay this at the doorstep of Hendricken, or Prout which has half the enrollment of any of the Warwick schools yet manages to play in a higher division in both hockey and basketball. Finally, what happens when a city school mercifully closes, and the two remaining schools are shamed into D1 across the board with enrollments of 1400? Do you really believe things would improve a lot? Most coaches around the state believe that one unified Warwick High School, by far the largest school in the state, would STILL not be competitive in Division 1 male athletics. Why is that????

    Friday, December 26, 2014 Report this

  • JStraw73

    MMcGiveron:

    Though I'm belatedly chiming in on your angry and curious rebuttal to Kevin Pomeroy's gracious adieu, such a diatribe against progressive reporting cannot be dismissed. Your "Social Science" view of the sports this newspaper covered over his five years, lacks the required foundation of numbers and metrics. It must be noted you creatively strained to gain emotional "metric" support with reference to such offensive community manipulation as private school scholarships. Are we to consider scholarships worthy of an English Premier League game suspension Red Card against Hendricken? To pilfer another British Isles reference, "Though dost protest too much, methinks." This reader, and in all probability many other readers, only perceive emotional self-directed protest. You spout theory in the manner of sports radio babble. Hardly fair commentary given the spirit of the farewell. As a sage playwright may have commented your PomeroyGate theory, "the fault, dear MMcGivernon, is not in our stars, but in ourselves."

    Monday, April 20, 2015 Report this