AHS Leah Vann alum connected to winning

Photos courtesy of Leah Vann.Aledo alum Leah Vann defeated cancer and continues to be associated with winning as an LSU sports beat writer for The …

Leah Vann still remembers when a local football star would come to visit her in the hospital.

And he would come on a regular basis.

A sophomore at Aledo High School who was receiving cancer treatment at the time, Vann said it was these encounters, along with growing up in a town steeped in a tradition of football excellence, that first piqued her interest in sports writing.

"Living in Aledo and growing up going to football games was kind of like the driving inspiration for it," Vann said. "I really loved how it brought people together. I had Leukemia at the age of 15 and that was the Johnathan Gray era. He came and visited me in the hospital a lot, and then Sports Illustrated wrote about it. It was this amazing story because he didn't just come one time.

“He kept visiting me. Sports Illustrated did this really cool article, and I thought, 'I want to write stories like that someday.'"

Currently an LSU football and baseball beat writer for The Advocate in Baton Rouge, the 28-year-old Vann remembers her time as a Bearcat with great fondness.

"Friday nights in Aledo — there's nothing like it," Vann said. "One thing that stands out to me was when I was going through cancer treatment, one of the cheerleaders asked what my favorite color was. I said light blue, and she told everyone to wear light blue for Leah, and it was when we were playing in the playoffs.

“I remember getting pictures from the pep rally all day of people wearing light blue for me, and then I heard about it on the radio when I was listening to the playoff game that night."

A roundabout trip

Vann, who briefly played volleyball and also ran track at AHS, first became interested in journalism in high school, but took a rather circuitous journey to becoming a reporter for a daily newspaper.

Vann said her mother thought she as "too smart" to be a sports journalist, so she decided initially to major in biology at the University of Texas at Austin.

"I thought, 'well, I just survived cancer, so I should probably be a doctor,'" Vann said. "But then I started working for the student newspaper my junior year, and I fell in love with it. It was exactly what I had been wanting to do, and I was tired of putting myself through pre-med classes that I'd work hard at, but didn't really feel like my heart was in."

Her senior year at UT-Austin, she took a sports journalism class and had a couple of online articles published.

"My professor told me 'you need to apply to any small-town newspaper that will take you,'" Vann said. "So I sent out applications all over the country. I probably sent out 150 applications."

It was a small paper in Mason City, Iowa called the Mason City Globe Gazette that gave Vann her start.

"When you move from Austin to Mason City, Iowa, people think you're pretty freaking nuts," Vann said. "But the thing is that I really loved it. I covered sports for 23 high schools. I covered junior college sports, and dirt track racing and old-people bowling. You name it, and I covered it. It was a blast, but I knew I was meant for something more, plus I had all these clips published."

Vann then went to work for the Steamboat Pilot & Today in Steamboat Springs, Colorado and became their sports editor and photographer.

Back to school

Vann then decided to take a break and return to school, earning a masters degree in journalism from Northwestern University in Chicago in 2020..

"I wanted the connections and to network," Vann said about attending Northwestern. "And I wanted to work for a major outlet covering a major college football team and eventually the NFL."

The only job she could find after graduation, however, was back in Iowa, but this time, it was for a bigger paper in Iowa City, a college town, where she got her first taste of covering NCAA Division I college football.

“I covered all of the offseason and four regular season games for the Iowa Hawkeyes before I got the call from The Baton Rouge Advocate,” Vann said.

That was in October of 2021.

A learning experience

In sports journalism, Vann said she has found a venue that allows her satisfy her inquisitive nature and share what she has learned with other people.

"I love to write, and it's a great opportunity to meet people, get to know them and tell their stories,"

Vann said. "I also feel like you are constantly learning as a journalist. Someone once told me that when you're in journalism, you never stop being a student, and I think that is very real. As someone who really enjoys school, I loved the idea of researching, finding something out, and then trying to convey it in a way that people understand.

“I also love the way that other people shape your story. When you're trying to get know somebody and, say your profiling an athlete, these are really passionate people, and I'm a passionate person. So I often find that I am inspired by the people I get to write about."

These days, she is writing about the LSU Tigers baseball team, which recently won a national championship.

Vann just returned from Omaha, Nebraska, where she wrapped up a 2023 season in which she attended and covered 66 of LSU's 71 games.

"I go to every single conference game, including away games," Vann said. "So I'm driving to Tuscaloosa, to Oxford, to Starkville. Last year I flew to Fayetteville, Arkansas. This year I flew to Columbia, South Carolina. I've gone to Gainesville. I've been to pretty much every stadium in the SEC."

In just her second full year of covering LSU sports, Vann was honored by winning a national Top 10 award in the Associated Press Sports Editors Explanatory Category of the APSE's annual writing contest.

Vann was in category A, which is the highest division of publications.

And the former Aledo resident is not finished.

"I feel like I'm only getting started," Vann said. "I received my first national journalism honor this year, which was kind of cool, because I wanted to know that I am actually good at this. And I really wanted to cover a power five football team within five years of graduating college. I definitely accomplished that. Moving forward, I really want to cover something at the pro level.

“That's really my ultimate goal is whether I'm covering professional baseball or I'm covering the NFL.

Whatever puts me in a big city...that is what I want."

Looking back

The 2013 Aledo High School graduate often reflects on her days at her alma mater as the place where her passion for sports was originally nurtured and has some advice for aspiring journalists.

"Be ready to work really hard, because it's a grind," Vann said. "Everybody looks at it for the fun things that you are doing, but going to games is maybe 10 percent of the job. The other 90 percent is doing research, making phone calls, developing sources — it seems like a glorious job, but it's hard work.

"The other thing is to remember that it's not about you. A lot of people come into the industry immediately thinking they have this voice of expertise on a team or on a game, but you must lead with humility. You have to be willing to learn about the team that you cover, and then in time, people will start to look for your opinion. It's not the other way around."