maly, too: Dream Jobs & Passion

Friday, November 7, 2014

Dream Jobs & Passion

Copies of a recent story published in the Iowa City Press Citizen, and the headline that accompanied it, have been drawing interest in the athletic department at Iowa State University.

I'm told that not all of the interest is of a positive nature.

The story was forwarded to me electronically by a reader from suburban Des Moines who follows athletics at Iowa State, Iowa, Drake and Northern Iowa.

The man's email comments to me when he sent the story were brief: "So much for objectivity. But the guy sure has passion."

Here's the headline, story and photo of author and Hawkeye cheerleader Chad Leistikow, which appeared in last Saturday's Press Citizen:

It's great to be home with the Hawkeyes

Today's Iowa football game against Northwestern marks a personal Homecoming.
I'll be back in the Kinnick Stadium press box — in my hometown — for the first time in more than a decade, helping to cover a team that I've followed most of my life.

Soon, I'll be the lead Hawkeye sports reporter serving my hometown paper, the Iowa City Press-Citizen.

For now, I'm still buttoning up duties in what was previously my dream job — sports editor of The Des Moines Register.

For me, it's going from dream job to dream job. When The Register and Press-Citizen announced a restructuring of resources several weeks ago, I found myself praying more than usual. What that led to was a singular message — not to worry about job title or money or anything else, but to charge full speed ahead toward whatever vocation suits my passion.

Well, I did that. And I got the job.

My earliest Hawkeye memory was during the 1981 football season — not a bad place to start. I was 7. I remember my parents — longtime Hawkeye season ticket holders — beaming as they came home from a 10-7 Hawkeye upset of Nebraska. I hadn't seen them that way before. There was excitement. To them, winning football was something brand new.

My mom and dad now laugh as they reminisce about Kinnick Stadium in the 1970s, when the biggest roars were reserved for the times when Iowa would get a first down. They didn't worry about touchdowns then, and they certainly didn't expect wins.

Of course, 1981 changed everything. That season was magical, ending with a Rose Bowl appearance. That year changed me, too.

I became invested in sports, and the Hawkeyes. Winning was fun. I remember road games the best, because my parents would be home. And that meant the three of us would listen to Jim Zabel's radio call. (And even if Z wasn't accurate all the time, to a 7-year-old, well, he sure sounded exciting!)

The passion grew. I got to attend Hawkeye games, eventually — my first was a 61-21 win over Northwestern in 1983. More Rose Bowls followed.

Even painful memories could be softened with Hawkeye wins. The day my top-ranked City High cross country teammates and I lost the state meet to Muscatine in freezing-rain conditions, my attention shifted to another expected loss. Iowa played fifth-ranked Illinois that day in Champaign. I shivered as I asked for a score.

"You're not going to believe it," my mom said. "It's 35-7 at halftime ... 35-7 Hawks."

This job I'm about to start … it all makes sense, looking back.

I cut my journalism teeth at the Press-Citizen. A long-ago editorial writer at the P-C, Jack Simons, helped me get my foot in the door with a part-time job answering phones.

I stuck with the P-C through my studies at the University of Iowa. After covering a Friday night high school game, I would drive my moped from Dodge Street to Slater Hall — with a small Pagliai's sausage pizza on my lap. (It cost $6.67 after tax back then.)

A lot has changed since.

I wrote a Hawkeye book. A reporting career turned into an editing one, which led to eight years at USA Today, an incredible wife, two gorgeous children, and the return to my home state with The Register's top sports job.

The Press-Citizen now has HawkCentral.com — a shared venture with The Register to help blanket Hawkeye sports. I am blessed to serve both newspapers in this new role.

To work — and succeed — in this profession requires true passion. And that's what led me back home.

I plan to bring unmatched passion and seasoned journalism chops to this new role, for you — my hometown — and for the great state of Iowa.

Chad Leistikow is a reporter for The Des Moines Register and can be reached at cleistik@dmreg.com.

[RON MALY'S COMMENTS--This move by the Gannett Co. and the Des Moines Register obviously cost Pat Harty his job at the Iowa City Press Citizen. Harty had written columns and stories about the Hawkeyes for the Press Citizen for 23 years. He was laid off recently. I have not been told if the Register plans to have a reporter or columnist move to Ames to cover the Cyclones. After giving it some thought, I find it ridiculous that Chad Leistikow felt compelled to write a story in which he absolutely gushed over a move to Iowa City, or was told to do so by his bosses. In retrospect, the Register, the Press Citizen and the readers of both papers would have been better off had Amalie Nash or someone else in the audience engagement department [whatever the hell that is] at the Register written about Leistikow's plummet from sports editor to sports reporter].

JOLTIN' JOE GOT IT STARTED

When Ron Maly was a kid in Cedar Rapids, he wanted to enter an essay contest, and he did. He wrote about Joe DiMaggio of the New York Yankees being his favorite baseball player. For finishing second in the contest, Ron won a Louisville Slugger baseball bat autographed by DiMaggio. Ron later wanted to be the first person in his family to attend college, and he was. He earned a degree in political science from the University of Iowa, and did what all political science majors do. He became a sportswriter. He had, after all, covered high school football, basketball and baseball games for the Cedar Rapids Gazette while he worked parttime during his university days. Ron wanted to sit in the press box and write about an Iowa-Minnesota football game, and he did. It happened while he was the sports editor at the Albert Lea [Minn.] Tribune, and the game was at Memorial Stadium in Minneapolis. Ron wanted to cover a World Series, and he did. Also when he was working for the Albert Lea newspaper. Ron wanted to cover Rose Bowls, Sugar Bowls, Orange Bowls, Cotton Bowls, Holiday Bowls, a Freedom Bowl, a Sun Bowl, a Super Bowl and NCAA basketball tournaments, and he did those things after he moved to Des Moines. Ron was a four-time sportswriter of the Year in the state of Iowa [the years were 1977, 1978, 1994 and 1996]. In 2006, he was named a charter member of the University of Iowa's media Wall of Fame in the Kinnick Stadium press box. A photo of the plaque that's displayed in the press box is displayed above this story. Following Ron's retirement from the newspaper business, a publisher asked him if he wanted to write a book about the rich football tradition at the University of Iowa, and he did. The hardback version of "Tales from the Iowa Sidelines" was a best-seller, and so was the revised, softback version. Now he's been asked by his publisher to update the book for a second time. He's in the process of doing that at the present time. Ron considers being asked to update a best-selling book for the second time to be the supreme compliment, considering the Hawkeyes won just four games in the 2012 season. When Ron isn't working on books, he's busy traveling and spending time with his family. Indeed, he attends the athletic, theatrical and musical [both vocal and instrumental] events in which his six grandchildren participate. He also writes about anything that interests him for his many websites. Every chance he gets, Ron proudly wears his America Needs Farmers T-shirt.

The Hawkeyes' Rich Football Tradition, Revisited

I mentioned a while back that I was in the process of updating my Tales from the Iowa Sidelines book. Updating it for the second time. The original hardback edition of Tales from the Iowa Sidelines [pictured at the right] was published in 2003, during the 10-3 season, when coach Kirk Ferentz and his Iowa football team had a 10-3 record that included a 37-17 victory over 15th-ranked Florida in the Outback Bowl and after the Hawkeyes went 11-2 in 2002. That book was a best-seller, so the publishers came to me again in 2005, a season that finished with a breathtaking 30-25 victory over No. 11 Louisiana State in the Capital One Bowl on New Year's Day, 2005. Because buyers had cleaned out the the shelves in the bookstores, the publishers wanted to know if I'd do an updated version of the book. I agreed, The revised, soft-cover edition [pictured at the left] was published in 2005. Warren Holloway, who teamed with quarterback Drew Tate on a miraculous 56-yard touchdown pass to win the Capital One Bowl, was featured on the cover. That book, too, turned into a best-seller, So I had reason to feel very good about my years as a published author. It's not every day that a the original version is a best-seller, and so is the updated version. Then, imagine my surprise when I received an e-mail from a senior editor at the publishing company last fall, wanting wanted to know if I was interested in doing a second updated version of the book. It came at a time when things weren't going well for the Hawkeyes in the 2012 season. They lost their last six games and finished with a 4-8 record. Frankly, the thought of doing a revised edition of the book during a 4-8 season seemed to be a stretch. "Maybe producing a revised edition in a year or two would be a better idea," I told the publishers. "We'd like to do it now," I was told. "Let me think about it," I said. After a few days of thought, I accepted the idea. I talked myself into the idea that this was the supreme compliment--being asked to do a second book update during a 4-8 season showed strong confidence by the publishers in me and in the Hawkeyes' football program. So I got back into the business of interviewing players and coaches again, going to postgame press conferences, weekly press conferences and a scrimmage in West Des Moines. After a press conference in Iowa City, I did a one-on-one interview with coach Kirk Ferentz, and mentioned to him that I was in the process of doing a revised edition of my two best-selling books. I congratulated him on the excellent things he had done for Iowa's football program--all of which contributed to the success of my books. "I think Coach Fry had more to do with it," he told me, bringing up the name of Hayden Fry, his one-time boss at Iowa and a man who brought Iowa's football program back from the dead in the 20th century. That's modest Kirk Ferentz for you. Even though the 2012 season wasn't something Hawkeye coaches, players and fans will recall with any special feeling, Ferentz has a 14-year record of 100-74 at Iowa that includes two 11-victory seasons [2002 smd 2009], two 10-victory seasons [2003 and 2004], plus he's been the Big Ten coach of year in 2002, 2004 and 2009, and national coach of the year in 2002. Indeed, Ferentz has done some wonderful things at Iowa City, and I fully expect his success to continue. I've concluded my writing for the second update of Tales from the Iowa Sidelines, and the senior editor has furnished me with an early look at the book. Not only are the Kirk Ferentz years included in the updated version, but so is the stuff I previously wrote about Howard Jones, Dr. Eddie Anderson, Heisman Trophy winner Nile Kinnick and the 1939 Hawkeye Ironmen, Ronald Reagan, Ozzie Simmons, Ossie Solem, Randy Duncan, Alex Karras and lots of other legends from Iowa's rich football history. I expect the book to be in stores soon. I hope you like it.