Shane Lantz, Sports Reporter

Resume

My name is Shane, and I am finally living my dream of being a sports reporter.

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a pro baseball player. I realized around age 12 that this was just not going to happen. So I set out to somehow become a professional sports watcher, and as it turns out, that is something you can actually do!

In my junior year of college, I transferred to the University of Washington in Seattle from the Tacoma campus, and fell in with the student newspaper. The sports editor was desperate for people to fill beats, so I took the cross country beat, and never looked back. Later that year, I took over the track and field beat, before covering volleyball, women’s basketball, and baseball my senior year. I also found work as a part-time play-by-play broadcaster with the Washington Huskies, and I was behind the mic for Joe DeMers’ perfect game on Feb. 24, 2018, the first perfect game in UW history.

After college, I took a job with The Seattle Times, where I was responsible for the TV listings, and sports agate page, along with occasionally going out into the community to cover events. After a little over two years at the Times, I took a job with the Mason City Globe Gazette in Iowa, where I currently work as the only full-time sports reporter at the newspaper. I am responsible for covering 18 high schools, a junior college, and a junior league hockey team.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, I was tasked with producing content for our sports section in a time where no live sports were going on. I approached it like any sportswriter would. With creativity and desperation.

The job can be challenging, but I am living my dream, and wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.