4-2-90 Thanks Ed (re Ed Kolpack)

4-2-90

Perspective: Thanks Ed

It was a pretty good week for Cobber sports. The baseball team got to play in sunny Florida. The softball season got underway. The tennis teams continued their solid play. And the Fargo-Moorhead community began taking some time to honor one of the pillars of area sports journalism, the Forum's Ed Kolpack.

When visiting athletes and coaches come to Fargo- Moorhead and witness the quality and extent of media coverage received by our local high school and college teams, they are frequently quite amazed. Ed Kolpack, who retires this week after 38 years as a writer and editor for the Forum newspaper, deserves a good deal of the credit for making our local sports coverage the envy of so many athletes and coaches across the country.

Ed has left us a legacy of ethical and accurate sports reporting which area athletes will benefit from for years to come. He forged a set of rules for sports reporting in the Red River Valley that local athletes now almost take for granted, a set of rules that says local sports are important, you don't rip young athletes, coaches and other sports elders can take some heat, and, above all, these are still just games.

One can quibble about whether, in a more perfect world, young athletes should get so much press attention while young scholars and young artists in other fields get so little. But that allocation of attention was never in Ed's control. His job was to be a good sports writer and editor and he did that job well.

Ed thought local teams and area athletes should get priority over big-time sports when it came to the Forum's coverage. And he turned that set of priorities into the dominant reality of this media market. The competition here between TV, radio and the print media to provide the best local sports coverage has made our little corner of the sports world better. Better athletes, better coaches, and better people.

As a young athlete growing up near Fargo in the 1960's, it mattered to me that Ed was watching and reporting on what our high school teams did. Many of us, myself included, went through periods when Ed's coverage of our games gave us an over-inflated sense of self-importance.

(I once tried to tell my Dad that I should not endanger my star-quality muscles by shoveling grain on the day of a basketball game. "This is a big game, Dad. Ed Kolpack is going to be there," I said. My Dad suggested I call Ed and see if Ed wanted to come and help me shovel.) But Ed's coverage of local sports also pushed us to be better because we knew that, through him, so many were watching what we did and how we did it. Ed liked teams and team play. And he liked to see hard work and hustle.

Those were the qualities he praised, qualities that reflected character. He seldom ripped the gunners and the show-boaters directly. But you could sometimes read between the lines of his articles and sense what team had played their hearts out and what team was playing for stats or individual glory.

Ed has never been much for a star system, holding up a team's best athlete for disproportionate attention. He seemed to have an unspoken rule that athletes did not deserve a lot of praise for that which was not of their own doing, like the athletic talent they were blessed with at birth. But how well a person developed and used that God-given talent was the true measure of the athlete. As often as not, Ed's post-game ritual included an interview with a role-player from the winning team. He gave credit in his coverage to those who made the whole package work.

Ed knew that what he wrote mattered a great deal to the fans and athletes of the teams he covered. But he never seemed to get puffed up about his role. As many sports writers and members of the electronic media around the country increasingly sought to make themselves an integral part of the events they covered, Ed avoided being the story. Ed wanted to be the eyes and ears for the fans who couldn't make it to the game, not some high priest passing judgment on those he blessed with his presence.

Not that Ed was without his opinions. You don't report on thousands of high school and college games without developing a pretty good sense of what is good, what is special, and what is stupid. But in Ed's role as a sports columnist he operated with a rule which said the older you are the more guff you can take. And coaches can take it better than kids. When he would chide someone for foolishness or unfairness it was usually done by giving young athletes the benefit of the doubt.

Kids, he felt, got enough heat trying to live up to the unreasonable expectations of most fans. But coaches are paid to be second-guessed. And fans like to hear the opinions of fellow coaches-in-the-stands.

Ed's old-fashioned faith in the value of honest reporting, with a sense of proportion, has stood the test of time. In a media world filled with rampant boosterism, Ed has remained an objective professional reporter. In a media world filled with sensationalist muckraking, Ed has remained a responsible reporter. In a sporting world filled with gigantic egos, Ed has remained a humble and honorable man.

On behalf of those of us about whom you wrote often and, usually, kindly, we thank you Ed. On behalf of us who coach women's sports, to which you gave such fair coverage, we thank you Ed. On behalf of Concordia, which received such excellent sports coverage through your years as sports editor, we thank you Ed.

We'll miss you. Take care.

These pages are maintained by Jerry Pyle pyle@cord.edu . These articles are copyrighted © and may not be published or reproduced without the express permission of Jerry Pyle.

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