Three years and a bunch of friends later, here I am writing my last column for the Spec. It’s definitely not something that I would have imagined being able to do when I arrived in the fall of 2004. It’s actually kind of incidental how I got started with this operation.
THE BIRTH OF A SPORTS WRITER
Over a game of ping-pong in my extra-large Wallach 2C suite, a friend of mine let me know that Sports was looking for new writers. I figured I would give it a shot and see where I landed. I’m a SEAS kid, and we generally don’t write things unless they’re numbers or symbols. You could see how this was actually a tenuous start on my end. I walked in, and I think I said something pretty cheesy to the then-Sports Editors Anand and Jake while introducing myself.
WORKING THE CHEERLEADERS
I had some great memories, particularly covering the Harvard-Columbia football game with Flu my first semester on the job. It was a blowout, down 41-0 at the half. The Crimson cheerleaders were doing push ups to match Harvard’s point total after each score. Thanks to the Lions, the plan backfired and they switched to jumping jacks or something like that. Go CU!
YOU TRY GOOGLING
“KESAVABHOTLA”
I wrote my first article with Taylor Harwin, talking about the turf affecting women’s lacrosse. It’s still the only reliable hit that comes up when I Google myself. We manned SportsSunday, filling out those ridiculous baseball box scores at 3 in the morning while high on caffeine.
INDENTURED SPORTS SERVITUDE
Then it was on to GameDay. Back before my Thursday nights became two-hour TV marathons of 30 Rock, The Office, and Lost, I spent my nights putting together the next big Norries Wilson quotes and predicting keys to the weekend games. I love telling people how I did this job (associate editor) for free.
PUTTING THE SPICE IN
THE SWING
Walking in the tough footsteps of Matt Reuter and spicing up our golf coverage was a tall order. But it worked out. We almost won the Ivies last season, and that was definitely a blast to follow. Tennis was also great to be associated with—Finn always came through with dramatic coverage.
THE LAST GOODBYE
I’d definitely have to thank the editors who came before me (AK47, Olson, Theo, Robinson, Hughes). Kamran, this is LA’s year. We’re on the cusp of something special with Mamba. Definitely have to give a call-out to my co-associates (Auggie, JT, Harwin, Chuckles, Jiadai, Max). And a sincere thanks to the editors dealing with the obscenely late submission of this last column. Oh, and a special shout-out to Orthometrics (just went public). Spec has definitely made a mark on the way I look back at school, and I can’t imagine going through SEAS without the outlet that the section provided. I think I may now be overqualified for a job at ESPN.
Kartik Kesavabhotla is a senior at the School of Engineering and Applied Science majoring in biomedical engineering.
sports@columbiaspectator.com