By Sam Wilson
Associate Editor
It sure doesn’t feel like it, but it’s time for this old guy to leave Robinson Hall for the last time as an editor.
Little more than two years after then-sports editor Jake Sonner, flanked by Ryan Papaserge and Tyler Diedrich, took me in a creepily empty archives room and offered me a spot as assistant sports editor, I’m leaving The Bona Venture.
As a bit of a late bloomer, I hadn’t joined the paper as a writer until the spring semester of my sophomore year.
My townhouse roommates surely thought I was crazy the first time I came home at 4 a.m. after a long Wednesday night of writing, editing and laying pages. I only confirmed their thoughts the next day, when I spent the bulk of my afternoon between classes helping finish the paper before passing out on the couch.
There were plenty of Wednesday afternoons I desperately wanted to stay in with the guys or — once I turned 21 — see what they were talking about at the Hickey Tavern’s Bad Beer Night.
But no amount of sleep-deprived nights or stressful cramming would make me regret joining this newspaper.
Instead of partying or relaxing on my Wednesdays, I battled tough with sports guys like Ryan, one of the most dedicated and hardest workers I’ve ever been around; Tyler, an incredible writer and just as great an editor-in-chief; and Kyle Zamiara, the current sports editor whose creativity has the section soaring as high as ever.
Of course, the credit for the fine product you pick up Fridays on campus extends far beyond the section I came from.
By necessity, The BV runs on a large group of incredibly talented people, from the tough-as-nails upper management to the section editors and assistants to the dedicated contributing and staff writers slugging through the tough work of stories about last-place teams or SGA recaps.
Without the lessons I learned at The BV, I would have never caught the attention of Olean Times Herald sports editor Chuck Pollock, my adjunct lecturer of sports writing, last spring.
Pollock offered me the challenging but totally fulfilling gig of covering Bonaventure’s women’s basketball team as a beat writer, putting me front and center for one of the greatest athletic seasons this school has ever seen.
It was the most fun I’d ever had as a writer and happened in no small part because of the interviewing and writing skills I acquired here.
With 11 seniors leaving this year, current and future editors have plenty of work ahead of them. But The BV will continue to provide excellent content no matter what lies ahead.
Thank you all for two amazing years.
wilsonse@bonaventure.edu
