Grayson Blalock is a journalism graduate with minors in sports business and health and exercise science. He served as a sports reporter, senior sports reporter and junior copy editor at OU Daily.
Jason Batacao with Seth Prince, Grayson Blalock and Colton Sulley at OU Daily’s end of year gathering on May 4.
Grayson Blalock, Gracie Rawlings and Colton Sulley at Lloyd Noble Center after OU men’s basketball game against Cincinnati, the last home game of the 2023-24 regular season. Blalock worked for OU athletics, Gracie worked for OU Daily and Colton worked for The Oklahoman at the game.
Daniel Homrok, Louis Raser, Grayson Blalock and Gracie Rawlings after OU Daily’s end of year gathering in May 2024.
Nick Coppola, Colton Sulley, Austin Curtright, Mason Young, Grayson Blalock and Jason Batacao after OU Daily’s end of year gathering in May 2022.
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Grayson Blalock is a journalism graduate with minors in sports business and health and exercise science. He served as a sports reporter, senior sports reporter and junior copy editor at OU Daily.
If someone had asked me not quite two years ago if I would write a Daily farewell column upon my graduation from OU, I probably would’ve laughed to myself.
“I already did that,” I would have thought at the time.
How I got there, though, was something I hadn’t expected.
I applied to OU — my dream school — in the fall of my senior year. I was accepted soon thereafter and committed in the spring of 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic was getting into full swing. Not long after, I applied to the Daily’s sports desk, eagerly anticipating the opportunity to start my collegiate journalism career after serving as my high school newspaper’s sports editor and editor-in-chief. High school didn’t end how I’d hoped, as I didn’t get to cover spring sports, and my graduation was pushed to late July so it could be held in person.
One of the biggest reasons I chose to attend OU – lifelong fandom and a good scholarship aside – was because of the OU Daily. I saw George Stoia win the AP Sports Editors contest twice and was on the Daily’s sports mailing list by the end of my junior year. Every lunch period during that time, I’d go to the Daily’s website and see if there were any new sports stories to read. Before I arrived on campus, I was fully enamored by, and determined to take advantage of, the possibilities that lay ahead.
Weeks after actually walking across the stage, I got an email on Aug. 12, 2020. “If you’re getting this email, then congrats! You’re on the staff if you choose to stick around,” Caleb McCourry wrote to myself, several other eager freshmen and a handful of returning reporters.
Choose to stick around, I did. My initial beat was women’s golf and having watched hours upon hours of Sunday afternoon golf with my Nana — as long as it wasn’t football season — after church when everyone else was taking an afternoon nap (sometimes golf-induced), I felt reasonably prepared for the job.
I showed enough initiative in my first few months, working hard on the golf beat and competing with fellow first-semester freshmen Jason Batacao and Nick Coppola to the occasional quickpost opportunities, that the rising sports editor Mason Young saw enough potential to put me on the OU women’s gymnastics beat. Finally equipped with the ability to cover consistent events in person, I ran with it.
I had the opportunity to feature standout freshman Katherine LeVasseur as she began her career at OU. I wrote about Karrie Thomas, Anastasia Webb, Olivia Trautman and others as the Sooner gymnasts ultimately fell short to Michigan for the national championship. Almost, but not quite.
I then got the chance to cover men’s basketball with Colton Sulley, and what a time we had. From our trip to Tulsa, to my missing nearly two weeks after getting COVID-19, the season was a blur. In some ways, though, it felt like an eternity.
Despite upsetting Baylor in the first round of the Big 12 Championship, OU missed the NCAA Tournament in Moser’s first season as one of the first teams out. Almost, but not quite.
They then fell to St. Bonaventure in the second round of the National Invitation Tournament, capping off the basketball season and my longest consecutive time on a beat. That basketball season, and the fall leading up to it, contained some of my best memories at the Daily.
Nick Coppola, Colton Sulley, Austin Curtright, Mason Young, Grayson Blalock and Jason Batacao after OU Daily’s end of year gathering in May 2022.
Colton, Jason, Nick and I made Donut King runs at least twice a week in the fall and always after finishing postgame football transcriptions if we hadn’t gotten Pizza Shuttle already. The Donut King trips continued with Colton after most home basketball games. We were there so often the employees learned our names (and even remembered that I had a gift card).
If we weren’t at Donut King, we were in the newsroom, until 1 or 2 a.m. Or 3:30 a.m. Or pulling an all-nighter or two. Whether it was tossing around a football for hours as we brainstormed story ideas or playing triple-overtime NCAA 14 games with Toledo and Central Michigan, there are too many fond memories to recount them all.
As the spring came and basketball season ended, Jason and Taylor Jones joined Colton and I in watching Marvel’s “Moon Knight” every time a new episode released in the middle of the night each Wednesday, including the three of them laughing at me just a bit too much after I brought snacks that one time (iykyk).
At the same time as I collected those memories that would be a defining part of my college experience, I was beginning to grow dissatisfied with my work. I felt in some ways that my progress as a writer had slowed. I didn’t particularly enjoy not actively rooting for all of OU’s teams, and for the first time since I began high school journalism classes, I wasn’t sure if it was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. Almost, but not quite.
I got to cover baseball and golf for the rest of the spring, but I had made my decision by the end of May. I wouldn’t return to the Daily and would instead focus on my work with SoonerVision and as an RA. I still wanted to spend time around everyone, but the joy I once felt from covering sports wasn’t there anymore.
For reasons unrelated to work, the next fall was perhaps the most difficult six months of my life, but even after I had left, I still spent time with Colton and Jason. I wouldn’t have gotten through it without them.
Jason Batacao with Seth Prince, Grayson Blalock and Colton Sulley at OU Daily’s end of year gathering on May 4.
The Daily wasn’t the only defining aspect of my college experience — Encounter OU, Oklahoma Athletics Communications, Residence Life and Beta Upsilon Chi (especially homecoming) all come to mind — but it is the only one that will be a part of my first day and my last, although the fall of my junior year, I didn’t know it yet.
Near the end of that semester, Colton and Jason tried to get me to come back for the first time. Instead, I went to a different area of the athletic department, and found the work that I hope to do at some point after graduation. That didn’t stop them, though. As we continued playing NCAA, albeit less frequently, they’d still ask when I was coming back, and my answer was always the same. I didn’t intend to come back.
As that year and last fall passed, though, I began to miss the Daily. While I’d found the work I wanted to do, I missed the newsroom where I’d spent most of my time as an underclassman, and I missed all of the people who made the newsroom what it was. I don’t remember exactly when I decided to come back, but I texted Colton and asked if the copy or photo desk would be hiring, knowing that a return to the sports desk presented a conflict of interest. After over a year of telling him I wasn’t going to come back, he didn’t believe me.
Eventually, I convinced him I was serious, and over Christmas break, I reached out to editor-in-chief Karoline Leonard to ask if there was any way I could come back. After some back-and-forth, a spot that I’m not entirely convinced would have existed if I hadn’t asked for it opened on the copy desk, and I took it.
I spent my first week or two getting used to being back at the newsroom before a suspicious package was left outside Gaylord College in the middle of February. I was at lunch with a good friend when the TV at the restaurant flipped to local emergency news coverage, our parents started calling us and several emergency alerts pinged, telling students to avoid the area.
After driving back to the newsroom, I tried to figure out through the mess of people if there was anything that I could do to contribute. We didn’t have anyone taking photos, and although I was a little rusty, I knew how to work a camera. With nothing else to do, junior copy editor Natalie Armour and I took a mini field trip to the top of Dale Hall Tower, which had a mediocre view of everything except for one news helicopter, before running – and I do mean running – to the intersection of Asp Avenue and Lindsey Street to get photos of the bomb squad suiting up. We then headed back to the newsroom, at which point I tried to figure out exactly how close I could get to what we thought was still a bomb (sorry, Mom) without someone noticing me. I managed to get some decent photos from the ninth floor of the biology building – which is the first and only time I ventured inside it as a student – before heading down as the police tape was lifted and discovered that not only was there not a bomb, the package had been disposed of in the Gaylord dumpsters. Several photos later, I bolted back to the newsroom, and we added those to our live coverage.
“Yeah, I did miss this,” I thought, sitting exhausted after a bit more running than I’d bargained for that day.
The rest of the semester was fortunately not full of false alarm bomb threats, but I did get the opportunity to copy edit batches of sports stories, especially as multiple teams were competing at the same time, and often well into the night. At least once a week for the month or so following, I was on Slack with Gracie Rawlings, helping to make sure that the fourth game story of the night (or so it often felt) had correct statistics and AP style before setting it live.
That pattern continued as feature stories were sent my way as the semester went on. Outside of copy editing, though, I’m proud to have been able to update the Daily’s sports style guide in advance of the move to the Southeastern Conference. What used to be less than one page is now 15 and growing, and I hope it will provide a solid foundation for both the copy and sports desks going forward.
Now, as I’m finally finished with all of my assignments and able to sit down and focus on this column, all the memories have fully flooded back. In the interest of not writing 10,000 words (if I had more than a day or two to finish this, I probably could have), I will begin concluding it here.
First, I would be flagrantly remiss if I didn’t thank the plethora of people who have made the OU Daily what it is, both across campus, and to me:
To Colton — What a time it’s been. I haven’t told you this before, but after the first interaction we had, I was a little bit miffed. It was a Monday night at Sooner Sports Pad in the beginning of February 2021, and you came up to me, and introduced yourself as the new men’s gymnastics beat writer for the OU Daily, excitedly showing me a message from Mason confirming. I was a little bit put off, not to mention confused, because I thought I was the men’s (and women’s) gymnastics beat writer for the Daily at the time. We talked briefly, and then went to Ruthie’s (rest in peace, Cate Restaurants) with a bunch of other Sports Pad freshmen. After polishing off our hamburgers and fries (always with extra ketchup) I finally came across a message from Mason on my way back to my dorm – sent well before we talked – that read something along the lines of “Hey Grayson! We have a new guy – Colton – who we’re going to give a shot at men’s gym so you can focus on women’s gym.” I then immediately felt awful for getting upset with you and realized I shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions. I’m glad I didn’t stay upset, because you became one of my best friends while on the men’s basketball beat together, and have stayed that way since. You’re killing it at The Oklahoman, and I look forward to following along with all of your OU coverage for the foreseeable future.
To Jason — Bataca-dawg. The life of the newsroom, the most talkative person I know, and also one of the most caring. I know that you’ll answer most anytime I call because we’re both permanently awake. You’ve called me enough nights at 2 a.m. (or whenever Colton isn’t answering you) to tell me how the Thunder and 49ers are either going to win it all this year or that Kyle Shanahan should be fired, or to complain about the assignments in whichever class we happened to share that semester, or any other manner of topics that you feel like monologuing about for 45 minutes. Now, I don’t hesitate to do the same. Your rambling ability also comes packed with an ability to really listen, and you’ve helped me through some tough times in ways only you can. I’m gonna miss you in Utah, but know that you’ll succeed there just like you did here.
To Karoline — thank you for giving me the chance to come back for one final semester. It took me a little while to make up my mind, but you kept the door open, created a spot for me that probably wouldn’t have existed otherwise, and took a shot that I had something left in the tank to offer the Daily. I owe this last semester to you, and I’ll forever be grateful for that.
I distinctly recall the first time we met – when Colton called me to help get your car out of the flood (which you recently reminded me, he drove it into) on Elm Avenue last March. I will never, ever forget trying and miserably failing, for at least 15 minutes, to push your car out of the rushing water, before the three ROTC guys got out of their pickup, and a random stranger joined to help finally get it into the Wesley’s parking lot. We then stood gathered around the front of your car that refused to restart, and despite our best combined efforts — huddled around watching YouTube videos on how to pop the hood, eventually getting it open, trying to jump it and rooting around to see if there was anything to fix — it still wouldn’t start. Subsequently driving y’all home in silence afterwards was a bit of an awkward introduction, but I’m glad that since, especially in the last few months, we’ve become friends.
To Seth Prince — thank you for everything. From within the newsroom to everything that has gone on outside it, you’ve been an excellent mentor, and I continually remain astounded at how anyone who walks through the door can sit in your office and feel the same level of care you manage to pour into everyone. For once, I’m at a loss for words to describe the ways you’ve impacted my — and I know everyone else’s — lives, and for that, again, I am profoundly thankful.
Grayson Blalock, Gracie Rawlings and Colton Sulley at Lloyd Noble Center after OU men’s basketball game against Cincinnati, the last home game of the 2023-24 regular season. Blalock worked for OU athletics, Gracie worked for OU Daily and Colton worked for The Oklahoman at the game.
To Gracie — I will miss our 1 a.m. editing sessions from when both basketball teams played, and when softball and baseball were on the West Coast. You did great work on basketball, softball, and everything you’ve set your mind to this semester. It’s been a privilege to watch you grow as a writer and editor, and I know great things are ahead for you as you assume the mantle of sports editor.
To Olivia Lauter — Thank you for my senior pictures, and for trusting me with one of your cameras every once in a while. I’m grateful for our homecoming memories, and for your voice of sanity when you were on football road trips with Colton and Jason.
To Mary Ann Livingood, Nikkie Aisha and the copy desk — I’m so glad I got this semester on the copy desk. It was a blast getting to help with sports and the sports guide, but also getting to work on Best of Oklahoma and New to OU. I truly enjoyed getting to know you all these last few months.
To Mason, Chandler Engelbrecht, Austin Curtright, Caleb and Nick — Thank you all for paving the way, for everything you invested into me, and being good friends.
Daniel Homrok, Louis Raser, Grayson Blalock and Gracie Rawlings after OU Daily’s end of year gathering in May 2024.
To Louis Raser and Daniel Homrok — keep up the good work. You’re both incredibly talented, and I look forward to following along with everything you write this summer and beyond.
To close, back to that story I mentioned earlier. As I sat down on June 1, 2022, I thought then that I was writing my last piece for the OU Daily. That in mind, I put a twist at the end that fit the story, but in truth, was the first thing I wrote with a double meaning in mind. The final line wasn’t just about Chris Gotterup. It was also about me.
“Despite that, Gotterup’s near full-circle moment didn’t close, the storybook was left with blank pages at the end, and he didn’t get to ride off into the Arizona sunset with the national championship he and Oklahoma sought for.
“Not everyone does.”
As Seth’s post-publication feedback came in a day or two later, I laughed to myself again. He suggested cutting the entire paragraph from the story and restructuring it more succinctly in similar stories going forward.
I didn’t tell anyone until the Daily’s end-of-year gathering this year exactly why I wrote that. I initially intended to keep it to myself forever. But, last Saturday, I got to add something else.
Almost, but not quite — no longer. Thank you for letting me complete the full-circle moment, finish writing the story I started and ride off into the Oklahoma sunset in the place that’s become home.
Grayson Blalock is a journalism graduate with minors in sports business and health and exercise science. He served as a sports reporter, senior sports reporter and junior copy editor at OU Daily.
This story was edited by Karoline Leonard. Avery Avery and Mary Ann Livingood copy edited this story.
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