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My 55-inch LG TV was too small for what was happening on the screen.
It was April 2011 and a kid from the Bay Area watched Kemba Walker cross over defenders like they were traffic cones, carrying UConn through the Big East Tournament and into the national title game.
Three years later, another undersized guard, Shabazz Napier, did it again as he led the storied program to yet another improbable title run.
I didn’t grow up in New England. I was raised 3,000 miles from Storrs, watching Maya Moore redefine what dominance looked like on a basketball court before I understood what a beat writer even was.
UConn never needed me to be from Connecticut to notice it. Greatness has a way of finding a television anywhere.
That’s the thing about this program. UConn’s influence was never local.
I’m Nathan Canilao, the Norwich Bulletin’s new UConn sports reporter. I’m arriving not as someone who is now discovering how elite UConn is, but as someone who’s been watching it operate at a national level since I was a kid seeing both teams raise national title banners from the opposite coast.
You can track my love for sports early.
Born and raised in the Bay Area, I had a thing for teams that would always eventually break my heart. The Oakland Raiders. The Oakland A’s. The pre-Stephen Curry Golden State Warriors.
The heartbreak didn’t push me away from sports, it pulled me further in. I played basketball through high school, chasing the same feeling I got watching Walker and Napier, just on a smaller court with a lot less on the line.
I wasn’t good enough to make a career of playing but somewhere in those gyms, I realized the game had already gotten its hooks into me in a different way. I started paying less attention to my own box score and more to the writers covering the teams that I loved.
I gravitated toward Marcus Thompson II, who could make a Warriors practice report read like literature. Tim Kawakami, who never let a team hide behind a press release. Howard Bryant, who wrote about sports like they were a window into something much bigger than the final score.
I didn’t know it at the time, but I was being trained. Every heartbreak, every box score, every column I read after those heartbreaking losses was pointing me toward a press box and not a roster spot.
I come to Norwich by way of San Jose State University, where I studied sports journalism. I got to stay in my hometown after college, where I spent two and a half years covering high school sports and the Valkyries for the Bay Area News Group. During this time, I was named a Sports Journalism Institute fellow, and my prep sports coverage earned national recognition from the Associated Press Sports Editors.
All of my experience has led me here. To a place I’ve never been to before and to a basketball program that I’ve only seen on TV.
I don’t take this opportunity lightly. A beat like this doesn’t come around too often and I don’t plan on wasting a single day of it.
I’ll be covering the full scope of UConn athletics, including a highly-anticipated football season that I’m sure has the entire Storrs community buzzing.
There’s a lot of ground to cover, and I want to cover all of it well.
I’m still new here, so consider this an open invitation. If you got a UConn story I should be chasing, tell me. If you’ve got a food recommendation, I’ll take that too. And since I’m bringing my wife and two young sons out here with me, I wouldn’t mind hearing where a father can take two little boys on a Sunday afternoon.
I’m still learning this place. Might as well learn with you.
This article originally appeared on The Bulletin: Greatness finds a TV anywhere: Meet your new UConn beat writer
Continue reading...
It was April 2011 and a kid from the Bay Area watched Kemba Walker cross over defenders like they were traffic cones, carrying UConn through the Big East Tournament and into the national title game.
Three years later, another undersized guard, Shabazz Napier, did it again as he led the storied program to yet another improbable title run.
I didn’t grow up in New England. I was raised 3,000 miles from Storrs, watching Maya Moore redefine what dominance looked like on a basketball court before I understood what a beat writer even was.
UConn never needed me to be from Connecticut to notice it. Greatness has a way of finding a television anywhere.
That’s the thing about this program. UConn’s influence was never local.
I’m Nathan Canilao, the Norwich Bulletin’s new UConn sports reporter. I’m arriving not as someone who is now discovering how elite UConn is, but as someone who’s been watching it operate at a national level since I was a kid seeing both teams raise national title banners from the opposite coast.
You can track my love for sports early.
Born and raised in the Bay Area, I had a thing for teams that would always eventually break my heart. The Oakland Raiders. The Oakland A’s. The pre-Stephen Curry Golden State Warriors.
The heartbreak didn’t push me away from sports, it pulled me further in. I played basketball through high school, chasing the same feeling I got watching Walker and Napier, just on a smaller court with a lot less on the line.
I wasn’t good enough to make a career of playing but somewhere in those gyms, I realized the game had already gotten its hooks into me in a different way. I started paying less attention to my own box score and more to the writers covering the teams that I loved.
I gravitated toward Marcus Thompson II, who could make a Warriors practice report read like literature. Tim Kawakami, who never let a team hide behind a press release. Howard Bryant, who wrote about sports like they were a window into something much bigger than the final score.
I didn’t know it at the time, but I was being trained. Every heartbreak, every box score, every column I read after those heartbreaking losses was pointing me toward a press box and not a roster spot.
I come to Norwich by way of San Jose State University, where I studied sports journalism. I got to stay in my hometown after college, where I spent two and a half years covering high school sports and the Valkyries for the Bay Area News Group. During this time, I was named a Sports Journalism Institute fellow, and my prep sports coverage earned national recognition from the Associated Press Sports Editors.
All of my experience has led me here. To a place I’ve never been to before and to a basketball program that I’ve only seen on TV.
I don’t take this opportunity lightly. A beat like this doesn’t come around too often and I don’t plan on wasting a single day of it.
I’ll be covering the full scope of UConn athletics, including a highly-anticipated football season that I’m sure has the entire Storrs community buzzing.
There’s a lot of ground to cover, and I want to cover all of it well.
I’m still new here, so consider this an open invitation. If you got a UConn story I should be chasing, tell me. If you’ve got a food recommendation, I’ll take that too. And since I’m bringing my wife and two young sons out here with me, I wouldn’t mind hearing where a father can take two little boys on a Sunday afternoon.
I’m still learning this place. Might as well learn with you.
This article originally appeared on The Bulletin: Greatness finds a TV anywhere: Meet your new UConn beat writer
Continue reading...
