As a sportswriter for more than 40 years, I’ve relished the prestige and pageantry of covering top-tier national events, witnessing plays destined for the record books, and getting an up-close look at esteemed coaches and young athletes.
I had a courtside seat at the 1991 and 2002 NCAA men’s basketball Final Four. Duke stunned previously unbeaten Nevada-Las Vegas in the 1991 semifinals at Indianapolis en route to winning its first national championship. In 2002, underdog Indiana University made an improbable run to the NCAA championship game at Atlanta under often-maligned second-year head coach Mike Davis.
Baseball great Don Mattingly and I have had lengthy, thoroughly enjoyable conversations in the visiting managers’ office at Saint Louis’ Busch Stadium when he was the skipper of the Los Angeles Dodgers and Miami Marlins. As the Toronto Blue Jays’ bench coach, Mattingly in 2025 participated in his first World Series, in which the Jays lost to the Dodgers in seven games.
I’ve been lucky enough to have had interesting up-close-and-personal interactions with other notable coaches and athletes. Often, they involved fiery responses to reporter questions or in-game play. For example, before guiding the 1990s Michael Jordan-era Chicago Bulls and the 2000s Shaquille O’Neal-Kobe Bryant Los Angeles Lakers to a record-setting 13 NBA titles, Phil Jackson coached the Albany Patroons of the Continental Basketball Association. After a last-second loss to the Evansville Thunder, Jackson sent a clipboard skidding across Roberts Municipal Stadium’s floor (sort of a Bobby Knight-and-the-chair moment). Keeping my distance from Jackson, I said to myself, “I guess I’m not going to try to interview Phil tonight.”
Perhaps the most memorable coach interaction was watching Mike Ditka melt down after his up-and-coming Chicago Bears lost to his mentor, Tom Landry, and the Dallas Cowboys at Soldier Field in the early 1984. Keep in mind, this was two years before the Bears earned their one and only Super Bowl championship. On the verge of greatness, the Bears let a victory slip away in the final moments. At the post-game press conference, it felt like “Iron Mike” was breathing fire. An arrogant Chicago TV reporter kept prodding Ditka with infuriating questions. Ditka said, “Yes, next question,” then “No, next question.” Asked why the Bears called a timeout, Ditka retorted, “Because we wanted to.”
I covered Bruce Pearl from 1992-1997 while he was coaching the University of Southern Indiana men’s basketball team. In those days, the Evansville Courier occasionally ran “Whatever Happened To” features on various former athletes and coaches. One of them was on Mark Bial, a former USI men’s basketball coach who spent time as a University of Illinois assistant. Pearl taped a phone conversation with prospective recruit Deon Thomas, trying to get Illinois in trouble. Pearl told the NCAA that the Illini had bent the rules in recruiting Thomas, and Illinois was put on probation. Pearl was then an assistant at the University of Iowa under head coach, Dr. Tom Davis. After his dismissal from USI, Bial was not enamored with the Eagles or Pearl, one of his successors.
I gave Bial two paragraphs of an article to sharpen his ax against USI. Enraged, Pearl ranted and raved so long on my home answering machine that it ran out of tape. When I returned Pearl’s phone call, I reminded him that I bent over backward giving him a fair shake when others weren’t exactly enamored with his past. Pearl, of course, went on to excel at the Division I level, guiding Auburn University to two Final Fours in his last stop before retiring this September at 65. He currently is an analyst for TBS/CBS college basketball telecasts.
Famous for the kind of searing intensity that almost rivaled Ditka, Mater Dei High School giant Mike Goebel guided Mater Dei to state football championships in 2000 and 2022 and 12 wrestling titles. He bit my head off more than once, answering a question after the Wildcats had lost a close football game. But unlike many coaches, he later texted me an apology when I was writing the story up in the press box. Class act. He especially put his intensity to good use as a wrestling coach. For years, the IHSAA held a team state wrestling competition as well as an individual state. One year, Goebel seemingly willed a good-but-not-great wrestler to victory over a superior opponent at the team state tournament by the sheer force of his will from the sidelines. I haven’t seen anything like it, before or since.
I remember well the rivalry I covered between Princeton, Indiana’s Jackie Young and Mount Carmel, Illinois’s Tyra Buss. Although Buss poured in a career-high 66 points, Princeton and Young prevailed 84-82 in the championship of the Toyota Gibson County Teamwork Classic on Dec. 28, 2013, at Fort Branch. Friends off the court, Young and Buss were inextricably linked for years. Previously teammates on the Evansville-based Indiana Elite AAU team, they tried out for the USA U-23 national team trials in 2017 at Colorado Springs, Colorado. Both were cut but went on to find greatness, Young as a two-time Olympic medalist and three-time WNBA champion with the Las Vegas Aces, and Buss as Indiana University’s then career scoring leader who led her team to a 2019 WNIT championship as its Most Valuable Player.
Aside from memorable interactions and game play, I have experienced unforgettable moments off the court, field, and diamond. Take the USI women’s basketball team’s second-place finish in the 1997 NCAA Division II Elite Eight in Grand Forks, North Dakota. In order to save money, the Courier had me drive to Indianapolis, fly to Minneapolis, Minnesota, rent a car, and drive the remaining 315 miles to Grand Forks, which sits roughly 90 miles south of the Canadian border. The fun truly began when I walked out of my hotel room to find a blizzard, with the wind constantly whipping 20-30 mph. I had lived in northern Illinois, but the cold winters there didn’t prepare me for anything like this.
Similarly, a freak snowstorm popped up when I was covering the Class 4A girls’ basketball sectional at Jasper, Indiana, on Jan. 29, 2019. A Jasper High School student was kind enough to try to help start the battery of my 2007 Honda Civic, but we had no luck. I was stuck. Incidentally, Jasper principal Brian Wilson — who, as his name may suggest, indeed was a Beach Boys fan — was surveying the parking lot for trouble. He let me stay in the gym lobby of the school as I waited more than an hour for AAA to arrive, then tow me all the way back to Newburgh in the wee hours.
A 1987 Owensboro High School football game also stands out. In those days, we sent our stories back to the paper via a Radio Shack word processor, and you had to cross your fingers that it would transmit. On this occasion, however, the Radio Shack transmitted successfully, but I found the gate to the parking lot locked. I was around 30 years old then, so I was still athletic enough to shove the Radio Shack under the fence, climb up and over the barbed wire, and hurl myself to the other side.
Writing sports for a newspaper was anything but lucrative, but that’s not the point. You meet tons of interesting people and cover more than your share of memorable events along the way. If you love sports, you always come away with a story. And I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
Lincoln, Illinois, native Gordon Engelhardt wrote for the Sunday Courier & Press for nearly two years before joining the Evansville Courier in 1986; his career continued with the Courier & Press through 2022. He has contributed stories about a referees shortage, the business of youth sports, rising sports stars, and athletic legends to Evansville Living and Evansville Business magazines since February 2023. He was inducted into the Indiana Sports Writers and Sportscasters Hall of Fame in 2019.
