The Evolution of the Sports Section
Photo by Kyle Comi
For about as long as one can remember, Centenary has had athletics. We used to have a football team that competed against LSU in the 1900s, we used to only report on Centenary sports news, and we had some impressive athletes attend our school. There was a point in our history when we were able to report on Robert Parish’s collegiate career, and the scandal that is tied to it. We haven’t always had the same sports teams we have now, and The Conglomerate's newspaper hasn’t always had a sports section like this one. Back in the day, if I can even say that, it was all about Centenary’s athletics in the sports section. With last year's section and this year's section, that is changing.
I remember my first exposure to The Conglomerate and its sports section. It was my freshman year, fall of 2019, a few weeks after we returned from our Paris trip. I was approached by my teammate on the lacrosse team about being interviewed for The Conglomerate’s article about the lacrosse team. My freshman year was the first year Centenary had officially brought back the lacrosse team to campus. I was interviewed by Sarah Maples, then Sarah Dant my teammate's sister, who was a staff writer for the Congo writing about what it’s been like being on the team in its first year. I thought it was really cool the school had a sports section dedicated to Centenary’s athletics for students by students. I made sure to check out the article when it got published in the then physical copy of The Conglomerate. To my surprise, they misspelled my last name as Ecomi.
COVID really killed The Conglomerate for almost two years, from the spring of 2020 up until the fall of 2021; the result of this was having an almost completely different executive board bringing The Conglomerate back, which meant that things started to run a bit differently but for the better. Many things changed, like moving to strictly digital, and the sections were not safe from change. Now The Conglomerate is back in full force offering a creative and journalistic outlet for the whole student body.
From my knowledge, in my freshman year and prior, the sports section was strictly focused on Centenary’s athletics. After the paper was brought back, now in digital form, the sports section focused on anything happening in the world of sports. Last year The Conglomerate even had a biweekly recurring segment where a staff writer would cover what was going on the League Championship Series (LCS). The LCS is an E-Sports league that is one of the largest in the world where they compete in the online video game League of Legends. Along with this weekly segment, the section would produce weekly articles about a range of different topics relating to sports. One of my favorites that I wrote while I was a staff writer last year was my article about the significance of our fans at sporting events, especially after COVID.
This year I was able to be the section head of the sports section; I was excited to bring an athlete's perspective to the position and be able to relate to the student-athletes that would eventually be featured in the section. I wanted to keep the focus on writing about mainly Centenary’s athletics while also offering article ideas that focused on broader sports topics for people who might know more about professional sports.