Ryan Chell
Staff Reporter
It was a long summer for me, but when July came along, I was told to come back here to school a little early. This sounds very disappointing, but I was coming back for a reason.
For those of you who don’t know, I write sports articles for the Carroll County Times, which is based here in Westminster. Prior to this point, I had only covered various high school games in the area, but I was now getting the opportunity to come back to McDaniel and cover the Ravens’ annual training camp.
When July 22nd came along, I was given my own press pass, and I headed off to Westminster every morning at 9. While I was there, I was to help the Times’ Ravens beat writer, Aaron Wilson, who also is a writer for Scouts Inc., is the Sports Illustrated beat writer for the Baltimore area, and has his own website to post articles. Whenever ESPN or NFL.com says: “The Carroll County Times reports:”, it comes from Aaron. He spends a lot of his time either at Owings Mills, and while the Ravens were here, spent a lot of time over at the Best Western, the Ravens’ hotel.
From that first day, I was just overwhelmed. I had been to Ravens camp before, but now I was allowed ON the field. Guys like Ray Lewis, Chris McAlister, Todd Heap, were like 10 feet away from me. It was so exciting; I was getting paid to watch their practice from 8 a.m. until 4 or five in the afternoon, and I got to talk and interview the best of the Ravens and some of my favorite players. I personally talked with all the Ravens coaches, such as first-year coach John Harbaugh, defensive coordinator Rex Ryan, and several offensive coaches such as receivers coach Jim Hostler, O-line coach John Matsko, and running backs coach William Montgomery, who coached Marshal Faulk in St. Louis.
One good conversation I had was with offensive coordinator Cam Cameron, who was the Dolphins head coach last year, and we talked for probably ten minutes about the Towson area where he had recently moved to. I talked to players such as Bart Scott, Trevor Pryce, Chris McAlister, Derrick Mason, and Todd Heap. What really caught me off-guard was when I saw former Free Press editor, Geoff Peckham, who is now writing articles on the Ravens website as a content writer.
The camp ended August 15th, and as I said before, this was the best experience of my life. My articles were posted on the Sun’s website, Aaron’s website which is read across the country, and several of my articles were on sports websites across the country. It is the coolest thing in the world to see your name on something like that.
In those three weeks, I learned how to take the initiative to go up to NFL players and sometimes asking them hard questions. I would recommend the experience to anyone, and while you may not end up where I was immediately, you do have to start somewhere. I have to thank everyone here at the Free Press for getting me started in journalism, and guys like Lisa Breslin and Mr. Dalton for helping me develop as a journalist, and getting me the job at the Times. Because of that opportunity, I may have chances this year to go to Owings Mills to write a story-or even cover a game this year.