Unlike most of these posts on Cody’s Road Trips, this one is going to be strictly about a sports assignment for my professional job as a journalist for Shaw Media. That includes the Sterling Gazette and Friday Night Drive (Shaw’s high school football website).

Why? This game meant a lot to me, personally and professionally.

Let’s start out with the game basics: The Sterling Golden Warriors and Galesburg Silver Streaks played a Western Big 6 conference game on Sept. 18 at C.C. VanDyke Field in Galesburg. In a game that went back and forth, and which featured more than 1,000 yards of total offense (about 3/4s of it passing), Sterling defeated Galesburg 63-56. That’s a football score.

I wrote about the game – and here’s my article if you have a Shaw Media online subscription.

Ball slingers senior Brady Berlin of Sterling and junior Grady Hickey of Galesburg gave their arms a workout. Berlin threw for 311 yards and three touchdowns and completed half of his passes (14-for-28), but Hickey bested him in aerial numbers with 414 yards and four touchdowns on 29-for-49 passing. Berlin rushed for the game’s final score with 32.7 left from 19 yards out.

The game ended on a failed Hail Mary that Hickey tried to throw from near mid field. Had it been successful, and the Silver Streaks had wound up winning the game (which begs the question, do you go for a two-point conversion after that?), we would be dubbing this the “Grady Hickey Game.” Hickey also had two interceptions playing defensive back.

In 25 years of covering high school football, this was the best game I ever covered. The game knocked off 2013’s Boylan 35–Hononegah 34 game in Rockton that kept the Titan’s NIC-10 conference winning streak alive at 60-some-odd games.

After you’ve read the game story, here’s how my entire day went …

A postponed “road trip”

In my 12 years with Shaw Media, I have only rarely been the “A-game” reporter for a day’s football coverage slate. Because my job responsibilities rarely involved layout work, I was the reporter who covered the games of our schools whenever they were on the road. Sterling traveling to Chicago? That’s me. Rock Falls to Rockford? Me, too.

For the longer travel assignments, I make it a point to do some road tripping along the way and before the game. I would clock in and account for mileage reimbursement only for the time/miles it took to get to the game and back, plus game time – or I’d be fired. Games in Chicago have allowed me to see places like Michael Jackson’s birthplace in Gary, Indiana (before a Sterling game at Gwendolyn Brooks), and take advantage of a 90 percent off Borders store closing in downtown Oak Park (before a Sterling game with Marie Curie at Lane Stadium).

The plan before this year’s Sterling at Galesburg game was to make it to some places. Judy’s Cafe, a breakfast place in Galesburg that has gone viral for interesting videos with its owner, was going to be my breakfast stop. Then I planned to go to Ipava, about an hour south, to visit the Easley Pioneer Museum, which has information on the former Camp Ellis World War II prisoner of war camp that was in nearby Bernadotte. Then I’d swing over to Macomb and explore the town’s interactive Monopoly setup; the creator of Monopoly’s predecessor game was born there. Then back to Galesburg for the football game.

That all would have to be another road trip for another time. When I got to my car at 4 a.m. to take off, my car’s starter went out. That jeopardized everything. Rather than call off covering the game, I had to scramble to arrange for other means to get there. A big thank you to my brother Chris and my mother for helping me. I didn’t leave town until 4:15 to get to Galesburg, which still gave me enough time to do my necessary game prep before kickoff.

Personally speaking …

My Aunt Jodi died about 24 hours prior to the start of my Friday morning. We had never really been close from my teenage years on, but it’s still hard to take any death in the family. We’re figuring out arrangements as I’m writing this post Monday morning. I figured that the road trip was going to take my mind off of the grieving process. That didn’t happen, but the football game did.

This was the first Sterling football game I covered with my step-nephew Landon as a member of the varsity team. His mother is married to Chris. Being on the sideline with him on a couple of occasions during the game was pretty special. He got to see Uncle Cody at work, and stood by watching my postgame interviews. Landon, a lineman, plays mostly on the JV team this year.

Health-wise, I had just increased a medication I’m taking. I was dealing with its initial complications (which I won’t get into) during the game.

The pre-game routine

I actually had a choice of covering this game, or the nearby Newman at Mercer County game. The Comets beat MerCo just before my game went to halftime.

I have a set pregame routine for all football games at places I’m unfamiliar with. Because I’m a large guy and being mobile still has its complications, grabbing good parking is important to me. It also benefits as I would need to get back to the car quick enough to write the game story before deadline. I want to know what my seating arrangements are going to be before game time. I want to know the quickest way to the field after the game, and the quickest way from the field to my car for after the game. Then there’s the word processing preparation, roster analysis, social media copy-paste prep, and any additional homework before the start of varsity warmups.

My typical goal is to make it to the place before the start of the preliminary game. Some reporters like to waltz in 5 minutes before kickoff, and I’ve tag-teamed game coverage with a couple of them. Ugh. With Galesburg being 90 minutes away, and leaving when I did, I made it to the game at the preliminary halftime, so I’m scrambling to assemble my routine.

I’m a press box guy, for now

My stamina hasn’t been great for about a decade, and the last game where I wandered the sidelines for the full 48 minutes was a West Carroll at Dakota game in 2017. That happened reluctantly. I hit my highest weight in 2019, and I’ve been down almost 100 pounds since. Little by little, I’ve made baby steps in wandering sidelines during game time. At first, for a few fourth-quarter minutes. Two weeks ago at a Newman home game, I roamed the sidelines for a whole quarter for the first time since Dakota.

Having never been inside Galesburg’s press box, I emailed the athletic director earlier in the week to assure seating. What I wound up getting was a stool at a countertop with a vantage point of mostly press box with the game outside the window. It was a bit too high for me. To further complicate things, Sterling was wearing gold numbers on white jerseys with very little outline. I couldn’t see some of the Sterling numbers, and I wound up missing identities in certain scoring plays. Guidance from elsewhere in the press box was minimal.

At halftime, I thought, “Screw this, I’m wandering the sideline.” Feeling medication effects, this was risky. But it was the only way I could be accurate in my reporting. Being on turf helped make it easier. Being around some people I know, nephew and brother included, also made it easier. While I had to make it to the bench often, I was otherwise on my own two feet for the rest of the game – documenting an exciting game with pen, notepad, and cell phone on X to post updates. The nail biting atmosphere still didn’t trigger any autistic shutdowns, so I’m at least proud of that.

After the game, I flashed back to the Gwendolyn Brooks game in 2018. While I covered the game from the stands that game, I lost feelings in my legs for some reason and collapsed on its blue turf during postgame interviews. The Brooks head coach helped me get off the field and to my car, and my friend Denis, who was working the game for Sterling’s Golden Warrior TV drove my car home while I rested in the passenger seat; Sterling trainer Andi told me I wasn’t driving home.

Anyway … I feared the same was going to happen this time. I told one of the Sterling coaches to bring over the three kids I wanted to interview and have them meet me on the bench.

Multimedia advancements, out-of-date Cody

During my interview, I failed to do one part of my job: Snap a picture of someone and use that as the photo for my game story. We used an old pic instead. No photographer was at this game.

The game got over just past 11 p.m. because of the scoring, multiple penalties and incomplete passes. That’s risky for deadline situations of 10 years ago, when we had a pull-out tabular in the newspaper with Friday football coverage. However, print no longer became our emphasis after Covid, and writing for online became the norm. This made deadlines less of a concern, but we don’t want to keep our Friday Night Drive team waiting too long.

Slowly making my way back to my car, I hammered a short story out (laptop pinned between me and the steering wheel) and sent the story in around 11:45. I did make a procedural error during the editing process, however. Strike two. Going off of bad first-hand stats for this story, strike three. I wasn’t proud of what I wrote. However, I knew I could get more accurate stats the next morning and update the online story before it hits print Tuesday.

As a freelancer by football coverage definition, I’m not required to do all of the full coverage work as the full-time sports guys. Even if I did, I would have found it hard. Videos of each touchdown – all 17 of them – would have been exhausting. Constant X posting would have wrecked my fingers. Long story short, I’m not in full-time sportswriting shape. Kudos to the guys of Friday Night Drive who can do this well.

Because I haven’t covered a lot of sports in the past six years, my sports following on X has decreased dramatically. Not many knew I was even posting updates.

I’m too slow.

I didn’t get home until 2:45. With Friday’s drama, and needing to be at a magazine assignment in Dixon at 10 a.m., Saturday became largely forgotten. Oh, and a 3 p.m. Sunday in Lake Carroll, too.

Looking back

Bouncing about the weekend like an old, worn out ping-pong ball (kind of like how the game went), when I did find relaxation, all I could think about was this football game.

I haven’t covered a full high school football season since 2022. Most sports assignments I wind up covering makes me miss being on a regular sports beat. This football game at Galesburg was the most I felt “homesick” in that regard. While I love my magazine work, the sports itch gets bigger. The magazine work has me bouncing all over northwest Illinois at various times during the week, and I’m not able to get a life routine down.

You’d think, if you want to cover more sports, just be more available for it. I’m capped at 37.5 hours a week for all work. Evening interviews are part of the regular magazine work, and it also limits my sports availability. This also makes me out of the loop on regular sports procedures, so I’m acting like a dinosaur to the rest of the sports guys. That’s not their problem. I’ve just been reluctant to learn because I’d only be utilizing it all rarely.

Covering a game like that brought me to memories of sports coverage, especially when thinking about my prior “best games ever.” I spent my first 1 3/4 years at an online sports company in Sterling before writing for the local newspaper for 1/4 of a year. I then spent 11 years running my own online operation before rejoining the newspaper 12 years ago.

Those 11 years I was on my own, as publisher of Northern Illinois Sports Beat, gave me freedom to cover and write about whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, and however I wanted. It took me from the Quad Cities to Rockford and the Fox Valley, and everywhere in between. I wrote stories. Took some video. Wrote some features. Wrote some columns. I even continued the column writing into “Cody’s Corner” during my recent sports-heavy newspaper years. Not to mention, administrating a message board with THE BEST high school sports fans in northern Illinois.

I miss all of that. I’m reflecting on my “glory years” like an old man. I wish I could bring all of that back, but the state of the industry makes that unlikely.

I’m stumbling a bit and I’m rusty in some areas. There was even a moment after Week 1 when I thought about hanging up the sports coverage clipboard for good after the football season – a 25th and final season. HOWEVER, Friday’s game makes me want to continue going on more than ever.

My football plans for Week 8 are still unknown. Week 9 will be the Alden-Hebron at Milledgeville game, only because I am working on a magazine feature during the game.

I am also making Week 9 the date of a big goal – I want to roam the sideline all 4 quarters.

I want to blossom again. I want to be “the man” again.

Covering Sterling-Galesburg is a big step in that direction. Very proud of both teams.