On the brink of the portal

Column: A personal story.

I was in the transfer portal for 63 days.

Or whatever the transfer portal is for a middle-aged college professor by day and sportswriter by night.

Let me explain.

I didn’t intend on putting my name in the portal. In more than two decades of working in Northwest Indiana, I’ve never entertained the idea of changing my day job. I’ve never applied anywhere else. I’ve never even looked. Valparaiso had become my second home and nothing was going to pull me away from the Vale of Paradise.

Except home.

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It’s the eve of Arch Madness and Brandon Vickrey, Todd Ickow and I are out to dinner in St. Louis at a place called the Golden Hoosier.

It was a memorable night. The three of us were joined by a host of other Missouri Valley Conference media members. We debated all manner of topics related to the league throughout the dinner. The highlight of the gathering was the waiter dumping a pitcher of water on me.

At some point during the evening I received a text message from an old friend of mine. It was out of the blue and the message contained a link to a job posting. Everything went silent around me. I no longer cared about the water that was soaking into my clothes. I slipped away from the table and stood in the corner of a nearby alley as I reread the job description over and over. It was as if the words were written specifically for me.

A university in my hometown had recently launched a major in my field and they were looking for someone with a mixture of teaching and journalism experience to help grow their program. This wasn’t a position centered around research and publications. This was a position for a boots-on-the-ground reporter who was at home in the classroom. This was a position for me.

I couldn’t sleep that night. I must have reread the job posting a dozen times. Could this be real? I tried to put it out of my mind. I was in St. Louis to cover the Valparaiso men’s basketball team and Arch Madness is one of my favorite weekends of the year. I wanted to soak it all in, especially if there was a possibility it would be my last.

Valpo beat Indiana State on Thursday night to earn a quarterfinal date with Bradley. I had shared the job posting with a couple family members on Thursday afternoon, which certainly didn’t help with my plan to keep it in the back of my mind.

I walked out of the Enterprise Center following the loss to Bradley wondering if I had just covered my final Valpo men’s basketball game. I hadn’t even applied to the job yet, but it was still hard not to get emotional when I started thinking about what my future might look like and what I might be leaving behind.

I decided on my drive back to Valparaiso that I was going to go for it. I wasn’t sure what I wanted from the process, other than to throw my hat in the ring. Leaving Valpo had never crossed my mind, but I felt I owed it to myself to apply. If nothing else, I’d be able to better serve my students with some updated job search experience.

The next few days were a blur as I sat in front of my computer for hours staring at my resume and cover letter. I finally hit submit on my birthday. That’s when the waiting began.

The posting closed the day after Selection Sunday and it would be two more weeks before I heard anything, which is fairly typical for this sort of process. My mental gymnastics were reaching Olympian levels as I was contemplating every experience in my day job. Would this be the last time I’d do this thing or that thing?

That doesn’t even begin to factor in The Victory Bell. I returned to St. Louis to cover Carson Schwieger and Queens in the NCAA tournament, then headed to Indianapolis for the NIT and Final Four. The constant movement gave me something else to focus on besides the waiting. Mind you, I still hadn’t even been contacted.

That changed on the morning I left for the Final Four. I had received word from a friend back home that the search committee was meeting to discuss candidates on April 1. I received an email the next morning that I was being invited to a video interview two weeks later. I pulled over and eagerly accepted the invitation in a rest area parking lot. So eager in fact that I wrote a typo in my response. Yeah, that tormented me for the rest of my drive to Indy.

Waiting 13 days for the video interview was excruciating. I spent several hours each night researching every aspect of the job. I had a file folder filled with information. I attacked the preparation like I was writing a longform feature article. Nothing was going to catch me off guard.

In order to protect my sanity, I dove into an oral history series about the 2016 Valparaiso men’s basketball team. It gave me something to occupy my mind other than the constant wondering. I spent a week publishing those stories and suddenly the two weeks were through.

The video interview was everything I expected it to be. My preparation paid off and two days later I was invited for a campus interview. It felt odd to receive an invitation to my hometown. They were going to put me up in a hotel and take me out to dinner. It would be like a recruiting visit, but in my own backyard.

There was more waiting as the campus interview wouldn’t take place for two weeks; ironically, it would be on my mother’s birthday. I had visions of giving her a birthday gift she’d never see coming - a new college sweatshirt while Ozzy Osbourne’s “Mama, I’m Coming Home” was playing in the background. I played that moment in my mind daily for the better part of a month.

By late April, I hit a wall. There are always emotions at the end of a school year as seniors are preparing to graduate and classes are winding down. My day job was keeping me busy and that has always been my focus, but my role as a sportswriter was suffering. Numerous basketball recruits kept committing to Valpo and I just didn’t have it in me to chase down each story. I felt like I missed the entire Valparaiso baseball and softball seasons.

Sleep was a luxury I couldn’t find as my mind would race from one scenario to another and 11 p.m. would become 3 a.m. and then the sun would come up. I gained nearly 15 pounds during the process.

There were more questions than answers as I prepared for the campus visit. Namely, what would happen with The Victory Bell if I left Valpo? Working (and living) in my hometown has always been a dream, but would that mean sacrificing this site that I love? Was leaving my alma mater and my home for the last 20 years the right decision? Was passing on the chance to move closer to my family because of my love for Valpo the right decision? Would the decision even be mine to make?

I put all those questions in the back of my mind and I traveled north. Much like the video interview, the campus visit was everything I expected it to be. I got answers to some of my questions and new questions emerged as well. I slept for 11 hours the night after the interview and I never felt more at peace. What was supposed to happen would happen and I knew I wouldn’t have any regrets.

I was in the transfer portal for 63 days. Nine weeks to the day after reading the job posting for the first time, I exited the portal.

The Valparaiso football team is hosting Lawrence Tech on Aug. 29 at Brown Field.

I’ll see you there.

(Photo courtesy of Valpo Athletics)