Gavin — Shadow of a Nation/Gary Smith

In Shadow of a Nation, Gary Smith shows how sports journalism can transcend athletics and venture into stories about all aspects of life.

Smith developed a story where the overall theme has little to do with sports, despite its ties to basketball. The story focuses on the journey of basketball player Jonathan Takes Enemy and his struggle to find his way while living on an Indian reservation. Basketball is simply the vehicle used to introduce the sports fans who are reading the story to the background story that is really being told.

Although I found this story the least appealing of Smith’s work because it seemed to drag on with minimal developments, he continues to do a great job of developing his characters with detail so extensive it seems as if Smith has known his subject all his life.

Smith’s ability to merge various topics with a sports angle shows how sports writing often defies its classification. In most of Smith’s writing, the story has less to do with sports themselves, and more to do with the story behind a person who has ties to something sports related.

With Smith’s writing, the playing field is not typically where the story ends, but rather where it begins.

I learned a lot about developing stories from Smith’s stories and will read the book in its entirety. The arrangements of his stories deviate from traditional storytelling and highlight his ability as a storyteller. His tendency to begin stories in the middle and break away from chronological order or incorporate flashbacks was very unique and structured stories in a way that was unlike any I had ever read before.

His character development showed me how important it is to create an attachment between the subject and the reader because it makes the story much more compelling. Smith also shows how essential it is to be capable of recreating the emotions felt by his subjects in order to create that emotional attachment and also to have a focal point in a story.

As I said before, Smith’s stories go beyond the boundaries of sports and show the range that a sports journalist must possess in order to become a good storyteller. I would highly recommend analyzing Gary Smith’s work in future courses. His stories combine in-depth reporting, quality writing, and eloquent storytelling, which are three qualities that are vital to all aspiring sports writers.