Writing for The UCSD Guardian gave me what every sports fan wants: a place to express whatever sports-related hot take, opinion, or argument that they have (regardless of its validity). I wrote at least a half-dozen long articles about the San Francisco 49ers, which I realize may be a bit odd for a newspaper that is based in San Diego, but I still got to write them. I even got the green light to write about how Mitch Trubisky would win a playoff game in 2020. 

But now, with my time at The Guardian coming to a close, all my sports opinions will have to stay stuck inside my head with nowhere to go. Do I start my own blog? Do I bother people I know with my takes on sports they care nothing for? Do I finally venture into the dark and scary land of sports Twitter?

The Guardian introduced me to a community of great people, gave me the chance to have the field-level, courtside experience of a sports reporter, and provided me with the opportunity to become a better writer and communicator. It was a welcome environment to learn and grow. And for that, I’ll be forever grateful.

Thank you to all my editors — Alex, Richard, Jack, and Praveen — for supporting me (and putting up with my poor grammar, spelling, and ignorance of all writing conventions). To all my fellow sports writers at The Guardian, it’s been awesome working with you all.

I’ll close this out with a few article ideas that I never got around to writing up. To any future Guardian sports writer who is out of ideas, feel free to use these.

• Sports Diplomacy Part 2 — The Middle East: Sort of a follow-up to “Sports, A Tool for Diplomacy?”, where I talked about North Korea and sports.
• The All-Asian MLB Team: Like the All-Star Team, but all made up of players of Asian descent. This feels like a nice article for AAPI History Month.
• Quantitative analysis of home field advantage at UC San Diego
• Revive the Triton Talk podcast

Photo courtesy of Wesley Xiao