People & Places: It’s because of my mother I’m a sports writer

Hello readers, I’m Adam Evarts, the new sports writer here at the Valencia County News-Bulletin.

I wanted to introduce myself a little more to you than just the sports writing  you read by me.

For starters, I have always loved sports journalism, especially older sports journalism. The days of Red Smith, Grantland Rice, Dick Schaap, Frank Deford, Jimmy Breslin, Sid Hartman, etc., have always enthralled me and had a place in my heart.

To work at a newspaper in much the same manner that those great ones did is still surreal to me.

Here are some interesting facts about myself: I’m a diehard Chicago Cubs fan. My paternal grandparents are to blame for that because they lived three hours from Chicago. My summers visiting them were filled with Cubs baseball on WGN.

I have three dogs: a Yorkie and pomeranian mix, a husky and golden retriever mix and a Chihuahua mixed with a hound dog. The last one there is 15 years old and looks mostly like a hound dog outside of his ears.

Science fiction is another aspect of my life that I love. I am a huge “Star Trek” fan and have been known to take in the occasional “Stargate” episode.

I do love some ’90s and early 2000s television shows as well. The show “Becker” with Ted Danson is one of my all-time favorites, as is “Frasier,” which, incidentally, is of course a spinoff of “Cheers,” in which Danson also starred in. Come to think of it, maybe I am a fan of Danson himself.

I did grow up in a video game era. I am nostalgic for the older systems. The Sega Genisis is probably my favorite, but can play some Super Nintendo as well.

Growing up, I always listened to the radio, specifically talk radio. Some of the conversations I heard listeners have with hosts always seemed to amuse me. Some still do, but not as much as before.

Back to journalism.

I think the interest for me in journalism, particularly sports journalism, began the night I was born.

On a snowy night in Wisconsin, after my mother gave birth to me, she promptly asked what the final scores of the University of Iowa football and basketball games were. I’m pretty sure that it was that conversation that planted the seed in my brain to cover sports. Of course, it didn’t hurt that my mother turned on the nightly news or sports on the weekends instead of cartoons for myself.

It also didn’t hurt that my mother bought me a sports almanac every year for Christmas so I could read up on sports stories and look up scores from years past.

How I got to be in New Mexico is not an all too odd story. My maternal grandparents grew tired of the Midwest winters and decided it was time to move to a much warmer climate. My mother followed them out here when I was 3. I have been here since, which, for me, is too bad because I absolutely love snow, and am in the wrong region for that. The good New Mexico food keeps me here. This I have no doubt.

So that is me in a nutshell, and now I am covering sports for a newspaper, just like that little boy in a Wisconsin hospital wanted to do.