Why The Victory Bell exists

In a world of video snippets and doom scrolling, TVB is here to share stories that last

There’s nothing quite like early August around Valparaiso University.

The days are still holding onto summer beauty while nights bring that slight bite in the air that reminds us fall is right around the corner.

Valpo’s campus has started to hum in the recent weeks. Construction crews are finishing up work on the freshman village and air conditioning is finally getting installed inside the Athletics-Recreation Center.

The building blocks of the 2026-27 school year are being put into place. The same can be said for the upcoming athletics season. Men’s and women’s basketball both wrapped their summer workouts last week, replaced on campus by fall sports teams bringing optimism for improvement heading into the new season.

For the fifth full year, The Victory Bell will be on hand to provide coverage of Valparaiso University Athletics.

For those that are new to Valpo, let me provide a little background. I’ve been covering Valparaiso for the better part of 25 years, first as a student journalist, and then as a sports correspondent for the Northwest Indiana Times. I stepped away from the newspaper industry in early 2022 to launch The Victory Bell.

The mission I had when launching the site nearly five years ago remains the same today. I’m here to tell the stories of Valparaiso University’s student-athletes through the written word.

I shared this message with the Valpo women’s soccer team during their annual Media Day last week and I’m sharing it with you today.

I truly don’t give a damn if Valparaiso wins or loses. That doesn’t mean the games don’t matter. Of course they do, but winning and losing isn’t my prerequisite to determine whether a story is worth telling.

Sometimes those stories will end in victory and sometimes in defeat. The numbers on a scoreboard don’t make an athlete more or less interesting or their story more or less worthy of being shared.

We’re several months away from the start of basketball season, but as excited as I am to see JT Pettigrew and Rakim Chaney build on their success from last season, I’m equally as excited to see Allia von Schlegell, Autumn Dibb and Isabella Anderson overcome a winless start to their collegiate careers. When plenty of others would have quit or walked away, those three are still standing.

That’s a story worth telling.

There are plenty of other stories that will be told throughout the next 10 months. The annual fall sports previews will begin on Monday, Aug. 10 with a series of stories surrounding the women’s soccer team. Positional preview stories involving football and volleyball will follow. A look into a fifth-generation Valparaiso cross-country runner on Sept. 2 will wrap up what is scheduled to be more than three weeks of preseason coverage.

As I said above, these stories will be presented using the written word. Perhaps I’m something of a dinosaur in a media world that vies for attention in short video snippets designed to bounce us from one doom scroll to another. I’m not here manipulating algorithms for page clicks. I’m also not vying for seconds of your time. I’m asking for minutes. That’s because these stories take hours to report and write. Maybe I’m naive enough to believe we still operate in a world where people can stop and breathe in a good story every now and again. I’m continuing to bank on that.

Which comes down to the uncomfortable ask. The Victory Bell is a passion project for me, but it’s also part of my employment. I walked away from the newspaper industry (and its corporate paycheck) five years ago in order to launch a media site that operates only by the grace and support of its readers. That means fans of Valparaiso University. That means family members of the student athletes. That means the student athletes themselves. That means you.

The Victory Bell is $7.99 per month or $79.99 per year (for those who are feeling extra generous, Founding Members can subscribe for $100 per year).

I’m confident in giving a promise that a subscription will be worth it. You’ll get game coverage, human interest stories, historical pieces, a new weekly feature that will be starting on Monday, Aug. 31, and plenty more.

If you’re at a Valparaiso game this year, please don’t hesitate to come and say hello. Introduce yourself, tell me how you ended up at The Victory Bell and let’s continue to share stories. It’s why this site exists.

(Photos courtesy of Valpo Athletics)