The Best Blogs of 2010

Happy 20th birthday to my brother Tony on this lovely Wednesday, and thanks for reading as always.
This year was full of fantastic stories on the blog, and I hope you tuned in to read the 160-plus (and counting) posts I have put up. Throughout the year I have had the chance to weigh in on NASCAR, college football, high school sports and much, much more. Yesterday I went through my posts a month at a time and checked them to find my favorite stories of the year.

Whether they were well written (and let’s be honest, most of them were pretty good—I know, I’m extremely humble) or they were just great stories with awesome storylines, I picked each story because of what it meant to me. Let’s check out some of my favorite stories of the 2010 calendar year.

During my annual Daytona 500 countdown I offered up my reasons on why I love NASCAR drivers, and the sport in general. Stories about Denny Hamlin, Jeff Gordon, Clint Bowyer and my own memories of Mark Martin filled the story, which you can check out here: http://adamniemeyer.blogspot.com/2010/01/as-young-kid-growing-up-in-cincinnati-i.html

It was a fun story to write, but without fans, NASCAR is just another set of grown men driving around with road rage. One of my favorite stories of the year was one I wrote about my friends, the Markaholics. For a class I went in-depth with some members of the Markaholics, who gave me so much information to work with I actually had trouble paring down the info to write a good article! Here’s my favorite story about my favorite Mark Martin fans: http://adamniemeyer.blogspot.com/2010/02/nascar-fans-use-internet-to-connect.html


Also for that same class I did a little “behind the scenes” story on the Elder High School basketball team. Head coach Joe Schoenfeld allowed me to visit a few practices and the game against St. Xavier. At Elder, the all-male Catholic school of 1,000 or so young men, team masses are a big part of the athletic experience. I had the ability to write about the team masses from the perspective of the basketball team, and I got to watch the Panthers defeat their No. 1 rival St. X, all in a good week’s work. Here’s the story on Elder basketball and the tradition of team masses: http://adamniemeyer.blogspot.com/2010/02/elder-basketball-team-learns.html

Speaking of high school sports, one of my favorite high school sports, and one that gets zero publicity, is high school volleyball. In May, while I was interning at FOX19, I had the ability to go out to Moeller High School and talk to four members of the Moeller squad along with head coach Greg Ulland. As a three-year stat guy with Elder’s volleyball team I never saw my team beat Moeller, and I know that the Crusaders are dominant. Six state titles in 13 years equals a dynasty in my book.

So I did my first ever video report for the FOX19 website, and I also ran the story on the blog. Here’s my story on the Moeller volleyball dynasty, but you have to go to the link at the top to see my smiling face on the video: http://adamniemeyer.blogspot.com/2010/02/elder-basketball-team-learns.html

I also took a class during the spring in Holocaust Literature. It was quite interesting, and we had the ability as a class to listen to a local Holocaust survivor give his memories about the horrible experiences he had as a German Jew during the Holocaust. The day was full of thoughts from a man who had seen possibly the worst period of human history. Here’s the story: http://adamniemeyer.blogspot.com/2010/05/holocaust-survivor-werner-coppel-shares.html

Then came Father’s Day, and this year was a different year. As you may know, my 87-year-old grandfather was in failing health and so I did the only thing I could think of: write. It’s a story that was shared to all my family members, including one of my cousins, who told me it was “professional grade stuff.” FOX19 Sports Director Brian Giesenschlag told me it reminded him of a story he wrote when he was in college about his grandfather. Get your tissues ready, here’s my Father’s Day Wish: http://adamniemeyer.blogspot.com/2010/06/fathers-day-wish.html
Then came the low point of the year, when my grandfather passed away. Again, all I could do was write about it. Except, I had a difficult time putting words down on paper; it was that tough to write about. But, the end product was a blog that was once again shared by my family before my grandfather’s funeral, and a number of my mom’s relatives said they were crying as they read the story. Here’s the story “In Memory”: http://adamniemeyer.blogspot.com/2010/07/in-memory.html

July was also a happier time for myself, as I once again got to attend the Brickyard 400, again with a media pass. In 2009 I wrote a story about Mark Martin’s coach driver Bart Starr (not the quarterback) and this year I decided to do a long profile story on a woman that all Mark Martin fans have become acquainted with via Twitter, his media relations manager Kendra Jacobs. On a hot and sunny afternoon in Speedway, Ind., I stood in Mark Martin’s hauler and chatted with Kendra. Here’s the story: http://adamniemeyer.blogspot.com/2010/07/kendra-jacobs-media-manager-and-top.html

Some of my less well written pieces are my rants and ramblings about college football stadiums that we’ve visited with the UC football team. Here are all of my stories, complete with photos of course:
Fresno State: http://adamniemeyer.blogspot.com/2010/09/fresno-state-stadium-photos.html
NC State: http://adamniemeyer.blogspot.com/2010/09/carter-finley-stadium-best-in-four.html
Louisville: http://adamniemeyer.blogspot.com/2010/10/new-papajohns-cardinal-stadium-still.html
West Virginia: http://adamniemeyer.blogspot.com/2010/11/post-400-country-roads-take-me-home.html
Connecticut: http://adamniemeyer.blogspot.com/2010/11/they-say-its-not-over-til-fat-lady.html

Speaking of college football, a profound incident occurred on October 27 of this year in South Bend, Ind. During a Notre Dame practice, a 20-year-old student videographer, Declan Sullivan, died when the scissor lift he was filming practice from toppled in high winds. The story hit especially hard for myself, being that I too perform the same job as Sullivan, and did for three years under Brian Kelly. While I had no time to write a response to the incident, I found an article by ESPN.com’s Ryan McGee, called “Up in the wind,” and it was so good that I shared the link via my blog. Here’s McGee’s article (and it’s one of the finest bits of reporting I’ve ever read, and definitely the best story about the Notre Dame tragedy) http://espn.go.com/ncf/blog/_/name/mcgee_ryan/id/5740321/up-wind
As the football season wound down and the first term of my final year as a student at UC wound down I had the ability to write a story about Dave Allen, the “West Side Musical Maestro,” as I called him. Dave Allen impacts hundreds and hundreds of lives each year with his work as Elder Glee Club director, St. William childrens and adult choirs director and director and conductor of the Cincinnati Metropolitan Orchestra. My story about DA can be found here: http://adamniemeyer.blogspot.com/2010/12/dave-allen-west-sides-musical-maestro.html

I hope you’ve enjoyed each and every post I’ve put up this year. It’s been a fun year, with plenty of ups and downs, as you can see from browsing my short list of the best posts of 2010. I’m compiling a few more stories to post before the crystal ball drops on Friday night to ring in 2011, and check back for those posts. Enjoy your day, and tell my brother Happy Birthday if you see him around town.