What’s in a name? Spelling!

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As a sports reporter, I realize that there’s one piece of information that I have to get correct in each and every story that I write. It’s more important than the score, the stats or the quotes.

You, the reader, didn’t believe that when you first read it, but once I tell you what it is, it’ll make sense. You’ve probably already guessed it from the title of this week’s edition.

The most important thing to get correct? The names.

I recognize as well as anyone the importance of spelling someone’s name correctly when you write about them in the paper. My name is Quinten.

But I’ve also seen my name spelled Quinton, Quentin, Quintin, Quenton, Quienten and so on.

It’s usually pretty easy to shrug that off if you find yourself in a paper that covers you, but it’s tougher to shrug off when it’s your hometown newspaper. I get it.

At my first journalistic stop in Rusk, I served as the sports reporter. I was fresh out of college and I wanted to make sure that I did everything perfectly. I wanted my stories to be fresh and new. I wanted all of my ideas to hit their target. I wanted my game recaps to be thorough.

(Don’t worry; nothing at all has changed between now and then. The drive remains the same!)

I covered two-a-days and media day at Rusk High School, receiving the roster after the second preseason game. I went through all the players and asked if the names were spelled correctly. I was told they were.

One player, named DeMario, was starting in the secondary. So I wrote about the upcoming game and wrote about all of the impact players. He’d had a solid season as a sophomore the previous year, so I made sure to name him.

In the third game of the season, he had a game where he had an interception returned for a touchdown that swung momentum at that time toward Rusk. In my game recap, I made sure to write about De-Mario’s big play.

The day after that issue hit the streets, I’m prepping for the next game when I get a call from a very nice woman who worked at one of the nursing homes in town.

“Hello, I just wanted to call and welcome you to town!” she said. “It’s good to have you here and you’ve done a great job on the sports reporting.”

I felt good! I had a fan!

“But we need to talk about something.”

Uh-oh.

“My baby’s having a great season and he played so well Friday, but I need you to spell his name right!”

It turns out that the roster – and the school record, for that matter – had his name spelled incorrectly.

He wasn’t “DeMario.” He was Damario.

Fortunately, his mother got a great laugh out of it – she was barely able to tell me the previous sentence without laughing about it.

“We get that all the time,” she said. “We figured that you were going by the roster but it’s been wrong for two years.”

These days, I check and doublecheck. If I meet family members, I’ll make sure. If I’m PA announcing, I’ll ask how to pronounce a name. I don’t want to get behind a keyboard or on a microphone and get a name wrong.

It really does matter. Everyone wants to see their name in the paper or hear it called out at a game. My goal is to get it right every time.

If I get a name misspelled, let me know and I’ll get it right.

Believe me, your friend Quentin knows how that is.

Wait.

Quinten. That’s better.

 

A CHAMP FOR MOST OF US

New heavyweight champion Andy Ruiz Jr.is not chisled out of granite. He is not built like an Adonis.

Ask former champ Anthony Joshua how that worked out for him, though.

Ruiz claimed three heavyweight championships with a knockout victory last week, making him the first heavyweight champion of Mexican descent.

For those of you who don’t follow boxing, there are four sanctioning organizations: the World Boxing Organization (WBO), World Boxing Association (WBA), World Boxing Council (WBC) and the International Boxing Federation (IBF). The reason for so many organizations? Money.

It’s best we not even get started on how the organizations can sanction regular champions, interim champions and world champions. We’d be here all day and I only have so much space. I digress!

With Ruiz’s victory last week, the two men holding the four heavyweight titles are both American. Deontay Wilder is the other. Both have big personalities, which is something boxing has been lacking in the heavyweight division in the last few years.

Ruiz resembles comedian Gabriel Iglesias – a fact the two bring up readily on social media. On his Twitter, Ruiz’s profile pic is a Snickers bar, which he calls “the secret ingredient.”

A lot of the talk after Saturday’s fight was the fact that Ruiz didn’t have “the look” of a heavyweight champion.

He’s a portly guy, so the Internet did its thing. One Twitter user referred to Ruiz as “Marvelous Meatball Hagler.”

Here’s the thing, though: Ruiz was 33-1 with 23 knockouts going into Saturday’s fight. He had never been knocked down until Saturday’s fight; he rebounded to knock down Joshua, the former British Olympian, four times.

His only loss came against New Zealand heavyweight Joseph Parker, himself a former titleholder, and the decision was disputed in boxing circles.

Ruiz has the big personality to market himself and his fights – and he can fight. He’ll get the chance to defend his title in a rematch against Joshua later this year.

Until then? He’ll be enjoying the congratulatory package Snickers sent him after the fight. He’ll make a lot of money in the rematch with Joshua: win, lose or draw.

And portly folks will remember the heavyweight reign of Ruiz and George Foreman and know that anything’s possible – if you can punch like a truck.

Still, I’ll probably get in a little bit better shape. Press boxes have a lot of stairs.