Feature Writing

This investigative story into the mental health impacts of the Apalachee High School shooting is the biggest story I’ve worked on with the ODYSSEY. The story required more than three months of reporting with mental health professionals, students, teachers, administrators, and parents, all producing a roughly 3,000 word account of a community tragedy. With this piece, I tried to weave together powerful emotions and experiences communicated in a narrative style with the simplicity and objectivity required for such a sensitive story.

I wrote this story about a Clarke Central High School basketball legend who had died 30 years ago in college, but was lionized by the Athens sporting community. In my reporting, I worked to balance observational notes with heartfelt, emotional conversations alongside those who knew him best, particularly his mother, Geneva. Conversely, I made an effort to push the boundaries of typical journalistic form in my writing, using imagery and considered sentence structure to advance the most impactful parts of the story.

This story on father-son duo Lucian Anderson Jr. and Lucian Anderson III's football journey together was featured on the cover of Volume 20, Issue 1. Scheduling interviews and visuals were a struggle and, despite the profile's success within the school and with awards, I learned so much more about what I hadn't done right -- too short interviews, surface-level premises -- which guided me in future stories.

I was fascinated by the story of Jerry Boatner, a near-on famous high school baseball coach who'd come to CCHS, a school with one of the worst baseball teams in the region. In a way, this was a full circle moment for me, as I learned from my mistakes with the Andersons, holding in-depth interviews with all stakeholders and even interviewing a coach from Boatner's old high school in Mississippi to ensure a comprehensive, stylized narrative.

While the writing was good, in some ways I found that the story wrote itself -- Dr. Lowe was retiring and her family was a very evident extended metaphor for the profile. What stood out to me more was my interview with her, which lasted an hour and nearly brought her to tears reminiscing about her time at the school. This showed me the importance of developing relationships with stakeholders, as we had spoken many times previously.

The profile's focus was assistant girls varsity soccer coach Ashley Wassel Still, who had been diagnosed with cancer. This profile did two things for me: firstly, it made me challenge my preconceived notions about "sensitive" stories. While I expected to have to tread lightly around the subject of her cancer, Wassel's bluntness meant I had to quickly shift gears. Conseuquently, I learned a hard lesson on how to characterize the subject from other stakeholders.