By: Matt Lood
Staff-Writer/Sport Liaison
Three years ago, a kid from Indianapolis was lost, he was confused, and he didn’t know where life would take him until he found IU South Bend. Then at IU South Bend, it happened again. Lost and confused and looking for that spark to start the rest of his life, he took a chance and joined The Preface.
That kid from above is me. To those that don’t know or haven’t read any of my works, my name is Matt Lood. I grew up on the northeast side of Indianapolis, which is around the Fishers area for those that are familiar with Indy. I attended Mt Vernon High School where I played baseball for three years. I would have played for a fourth year, but a little thing called COVID-19 decided it was going to rear its ugly little head and mess that up.
As a child, I knew one thing and that was sports. I played them all, from football to baseball to soccer, but never basketball, which is weird because it’s almost required in this state. Sports were my life. When I wasn’t playing sports, I was watching sports or reading about them. I knew all the statistics of all the players. For my entire life, I dreamed of becoming a professional athlete, but then something called reality set in, and I soon realized that my dream would have to stay a dream.
In high school, I was not the best student. It was not due to a lack of intelligence or not liking school because I do enjoy school. I just never applied myself. To me, at the young age of 16, high school was simply there as a way to not focus all my energy on sports. In my case, that was baseball. As the years passed by, my parents began hounding me to think about my future. “The rest of [my] life”, they would tell me. I told them that baseball might be an option for college to get a degree, when in reality it was an excuse for me to keep doing what I loved, and that was playing baseball.
When IU South Bend offered me a spot on the team, I was overjoyed because it meant that I could still continue my dream. However, in the back of my mind, the phrase “the rest of my life” kept playing, so I decided to give this school thing a chance. Now, I’ve always had the gift of gab, so communications seemed like the perfect fit for me. It’s not until recently that I realized this whole journalism thing might actually be the best fit for me. As I sit back and reflect and write this profile, I realize I can still live the dream of being in sports through journalism. My new dream is to become a sports journalist, and hopefully I inspire the next kid who’s lost and confused about the rest of their life that all that time invested in sports can be a sustainable career.
