From the sports section, we thank you. 

Sam Taylor

I cannot believe this is the final week of the semester. The job of sports editor has dominated my life for the past year since I was hired in May 2022. It has truly been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life thanks to the friendships I have gained and the opportunities I have received.

My goals for the section were to 1) recruit more people, 2) ensure that each Division-I WSU program had a dedicated beat writer and 3) improve the quality of the Evergreen’s sports coverage to include in-depth student-athlete features, columns on local and national sports topics and coverage of club sports and high school sports.

After one year, I can confidently say that we have accomplished each one of those goals.

In May, I was one of three returning writers. The first writer I hired was my friend Trevor Junt. Trevor is one of the most passionate and dedicated sports fans and journalists I know. His name rhymes with blunt for a reason. He has been one of the most supportive friends I’ve had the pleasure to know.

The whole job of an editor is one of improvisation. Things went wrong every day, but our team of writers, photographers and the editorial staff stuck it out.

I am proud to have covered WSU women’s basketball’s Pac-12 Championship season and cover Pullman High School boys basketball.

I am proud to say I will return to the Evergreen as the managing editor for the summer and fall semesters. I am even more proud to say I will be working with one of the brightest students and one of my best friends Brandon Willman, who will do an excellent job as the next editor-in-chief.

Brandon was one of the first people I hired in August. I saw him personally transform the style of the Evergreen through coverage of WSU volleyball, insightful sports columns and excellent news writing.

I am also proud of the next sports editors Hayden Stinchfield and Luke Westfall. Both Hayden and Luke are phenomenal writers and I’m so excited for them to lead the sports section to new heights. Y’all are going to crush this!

Thank you for the honor of being sports editor for the past year. I am so proud of everything we accomplished. Go Cougs!

Trevor Junt

Hey Cougs! I’m Trevor Junt, I’ve been working as your deputy sports editor for the past year. 

Sam and I have worked hard for this environment we’ve created. A very accepting community that wants to see our writers get better and succeed. 

We’ve grown from a section made up of four people, which included Sam and I, in the early fall to a section that is made up of 17 different writers. 

We have beats covering each Division-I sport at WSU and lots of the club sports as well. 

This will be my final story published in the Evergreen, and what a ride it’s been. 

I worked as the beat writer for the football team for most of my time here and football is my favorite sport, so it’s truly been a blast to be given that opportunity. 

I’m grateful for my time here not just because of the stories I’ve written, helped created or edited. But the connections and friendships cemented are what makes my time here matter. 

Sam Taylor, A.K.A da boss, the sports editor. We became friends after making a connection through Wazzu Sports Network in Cable 8 last year. I thought he was cool but our relationship didn’t go much further on a level other than work. 

During the summer he hired me as a writer and then made me his deputy sports editor. Our relationship has grown; though, yes, our work relationship is great and we work as an incredible tandem, we have moved on to friends that fully intend on being connected for the rest of our lives. 

I’ve got to spend more time with him and just enjoy his company, one of the sweetest and most kind people you would ever meet. I will genuinely miss hanging out with him and even though this is the last time we’ll go to school together our relationship is nowhere close to over. 

Brandon Willman is the Evergreen EIC in about three days. Sam hired him in August. We hit it off immediately, our personalities are very similar. In one of the first two weeks I met him, we took prom photos together. Our friendship has grown larger and larger since. 

I had the incredible opportunity to meet him as soon as he joined Murrow and let him into all the friend groups created here, he also joined Cable 8, which was Cable great in my opinion. 

Our relationship has transcended from work friends to close personal friends. If I’m doing something, I’m inviting him. 

He is a great person and a great friend a very caring person but someone you can mess around with too.

A friendship I made at the Evergreen I am so incredibly grateful for and am excited to maintain our friendship as we are both very successful in our professional careers.

So thank you to the entire Evergreen staff for accepting me for who I am and who I was as a leader and journalist. I will always look at my time here fondly, as I move on to gradation I hope a legacy is built for sports in Murrow and that it continues to grow.