New sports reporter seeks the drama behind the game

MOSES LAKE — What Ian Bivona really likes about covering sports is the drama.

Because there’s more to athletics than simply scores and stats.

“You can look at sports and see, oh, it's just a game,” said Bivona. “You can look at the final score, but there's always another story there.”

Whether it's an athlete to a new school or making a state record or striving to earn a playing a scholarship so they can make a better life, Bivona said there’s always a story behind the ball snaps, passes, pitches, tip-offs or track heats that makes what is happening on the field or in the court more interesting.

“There's always a story underneath the story of the final score of a game,” he said.

Bivona, 23, comes to the Columbia Basin Herald with the ink on his Auburn University journalism degree still wet. In fact, aside from being born and spending the first few years of his life in Hawaii — something he said he doesn’t remember — Bivona said he’s spent most of his life out east, growing up in the suburbs of Northern Virginia where his military veteran parents lived and worked.

However, Bivona said one of the things that drove him to go to school in Alabama, and then come to work in Eastern Washington, is that they aren’t Northern Virginia.

“I grew up in Fairfax County,” he said. “I wanted to experience a new part of the country just to have a balance. I’ve lived in big cities, and I also lived somewhere smaller.”

“That’s why I went to Auburn. It’s not like Virginia at all,” Bivona added, noting he’s excited at being out and about, meeting people and learning about a different part of the country.

At 1.16 million people, Fairfax County is Virginia’s most populous county, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, while Auburn boasts a population of only around 76,000.

It helped that Auburn University has an extensive athletics program, and the school’s football team boasts two national championship titles from 1957 and 2010. It made being a student with an interest in covering sports, and then his apprenticeship as a college sports writer, relatively easy and enjoyable, Bivona said, since there was a lot to cover.

“In my first couple of years I did a lot of softball and baseball, soccer coverage, and then in my internship and my last two years at school I was writing about football and basketball,” Bivona said. “Auburn is turning into a pretty big basketball school too.”

While Bivona said he likes sports of all kinds, he’s especially interested in football.

“I’m a big football fan,” he said. “I grew up watching football pretty much anytime it was on with my dad. We’d do that every Sunday, we’d go and watch the Jets.”

“But I’ll watch anything. Just any athletics,” he added.

Finally, Bivona finds the desert landscape of the Columbia Basin, and the snow on the Cascades, captivating. It’s something you don’t see in Northern Virginia or south-eastern Alabama.

“I’m a big nature guy. I was a Boy Scout and I just love being in nature and seeing the mountains in the background, that’s really cool. There are no mountains in Northern Virginia,” he said.

Charles H. Featherstone can be reached at cfeatherstone@columbiabaisnherald.com.