The Nathan Pace Bowl

Hunter Gennicks evades a Monrovia pass rusher in 2021.

No, the Nathan Pace Bowl is not a thing. It’s just what I call Linton’s game with Monrovia as a personal joke. From 2017 to 2020, I covered way too many Monrovia sporting events for the two newspapers in Morgan County.

Steve Page was the Sports Editor for the Martinsville Reporter-Times and Mooresville Decatur-Times. Try putting that on a business card. I had a connection with another writer to him so I started freelancing for their papers in 2016-17. In 2017, Page needed someone to cover Monrovia and I was slotted in for everything other than football. Cross-country, golf, basketball, volleyball, baseball and softball. Like I said, way too many. I ended up covering cross-country and track the most and its why I try to delegate those sports off whenever I can today.

It was a fruitful experience as it pretty much prepared me for this job. I practiced photography, interviews, writing and even a bit of video but the latter just went on my social media.

Monrovia is similar to Linton. Small town that loves its football team. Houses are filled with long-time residents instead of transplants. Linton has more grocery stores and fast-food restaurants though.

Covering Monrovia, I made some small mistakes. I sent in a photo of the basketball coach yelling at his player. The mother of said player confronted me about it the next game. I have not published a photo of a coach yelling at one of his players since. That coach also provided me with one of the worst interviews I have ever conducted. For about two minutes he made no eye contact with me after a loss and just said one sentence clichés. I thought about quitting that night as it was a lot of drama for $50.

For whatever reason, I stayed around until the pandemic. The newspapers in Morgan County made management changes as they were sold twice in a year. Page was cut as sports editor for no legitimate reason. For about six months I worked for Gannett, a company I vowed to never work for. That’s for another column.

Once the papers changed owners it was time to go. I had also moved further away from Monrovia too and the road construction in Morgan County for I-69 made it harder for me to cover those schools. Those papers also had no ability to utilize video and photo galleries. Something I made sure this publication did when I came aboard.

Still, Monrovia prepared me for Linton and Greene County. Friday’s football game might be two teams on the fields to most. For me, it’s years of small town sports writing experiences that have prepared me for the coverage of it.

Nathan Pace is the Sports Editor of the Greene County Daily World and can be reached at npace@gcdailyworld.com. His “Low Budget Sports Show” airs weekly on Facebook Live.