If there is one symbol, number, icon – anything – that I’d choose to represent my four years here, it would be the number 744.

In white wooden numerals, right there on the door coated in chipped red paint, the three digits each secured by two nails greet you every time. The inside may be a bit musty and the vending machine only semi-functional, but those who have labored inside the confines of 744 Ostrom Ave. know how much the house means.

For at least four nights every week, editors work until the early morning producing The Daily Orange. That was my life for four semesters — first as an assistant sports copy editor, then two semesters as an assistant sports editor and one semester as sports editor — and at times I wanted nothing more than to walk right back past that “744” and into my house to sleep.

Thankfully I didn’t, or else I probably wouldn’t be here writing my final story for The Daily Orange, which also happens to be my 744th.

Some of the 744 stories were crap, some a little better, from softball game stories to subpar football features to a longform men’s basketball story after I flew an entire country’s length. A couple of weeks back, after Mike Hopkins surprisingly left Syracuse after 22 years as Jim Boeheim’s assistant for his first head-coaching job at Washington, I flew to Seattle to sit down with Hopkins after his introductory press conference.

As I entered a room for our one-on-one, I went for a handshake. Hopkins has always been personable and a pleasure to deal with, but I wasn’t expecting the full bear hug he engulfed me in. “Cuse Mafia,” he shouted at me. “… You have two tickets to a game here anytime!”

I’ve always told people I’d rather do something I love and make less money than do something I don’t and make slightly more. That goes for journalism, hardly generous on the pockets, where experiences like those with Hopkins and so many more make it seem like maybe just a little of this writing thing I’ve taken on carries significance in other people’s lives when I try to tell their stories.

My first story wasn’t even my first, less than 300 words of written vomit in a Microsoft Word document about the club Frisbee team with only one interview included. I sat down in a chair next to then-Sports Editor David Wilson as a clueless yet eager freshman to review the story before it was published, and he politely told me to try again. The story wasn’t published.

My first published story was a sider off a women’s field hockey game on penalty corners. Did I know what penalty corners were at the time? Hell no. But as every soul who’s passed through The D.O. knows, the beginning isn’t glamorous.

I’ll always remember Connor Grossman and I taking the Nob Hill bus to try to get downtown for a women’s hockey game we were covering. Connor assured me the bus would take us to the War Memorial, but he couldn’t have been more wrong. As a freshman, I knew nothing about directions, writing or how to be an actual reporter.

What began as an infatuation with talking to Division I athletes — women’s hockey players, softball players, men’s soccer players — turned into a desire to simply tell the best story possible. The kinds of stories that make athletes glad they told their personal story to me.

I thank, among others, Hopkins, Gerry McNamara and Paschal Chukwu for letting a kid from Wilton, Connecticut, do that. And thanks to, among many others, Jesse Dougherty, Sam Blum, Justin Mattingly and Mara Corbett for helping me do so along the way.

So as I write my 744th and last story for The Daily Orange, thank you. For reading one, for reading 10, for reading all 744 (Mom). Thank you.

Matt Schneidman is a senior staff writer at The Daily Orange, where his column will no longer appear. He can be reached at mcschnei@syr.edu or on Twitter @matt_schneidman.

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Published on April 26, 2017 at 9:51 pm