Bio
I'm from Brooklyn and attended Kingsborough Community College, earning the KBCC Journalism and Print Media Program Award in spring 2020, before transferring to Quinnipiac University. At QU, I earned my Bachelor of Arts in journalism in 2022 and graduated magna cum laude. I received my Master of Science in journalism the following year. Then, I moved to Rhode Island to take a job as the sports editor at The Independent, a newspaper based in South County, Rhode Island.
My main responsibility at The Independent is to create the entire weekly sports section from scratch using InDesign, covering all sports in North Kingstown, South Kingstown and Narragansett. To do so, I write 5-10 articles per week with content primarily coming from covering live high school or college sports, which I'm also responsible for live-tweeting. Other responsibilities include assigning our photographers and freelancer, taking and editing my own photos when photographers are unavailable, editing work from our two columnists and freelancer, and uploading to and maintaining the sports section of the website.
NARRAGANSETT – After 11th grade, Mary Rand left Narragansett High School and temporarily moved to North Woodstock, New Hampshire, to live in a cabin. Leaving a primarily flat state with no real mountains was the logical next step for someone pursuing a career in snowboarding.
March 28, 2024
NORTH SMITHFIELD – Even though Narragansett’s Ethan Travis leads the entire state of Rhode Island in points during league games by a considerable margin, the sophomore winger isn’t going to let a breakout season stop his humility.
Rather than acknowledging his absurd scoring pace, he’s focused on the prize of winning hockey games.
Jan. 18, 2024
PROVIDENCE – All the rage in 2023 is for the “Tush Push.” But remember the "Philly Special?"
The Skippers do.
They ran their own version of the trick play that highlighted Super Bowl 52 during Friday night’s semifinal matchup against heavy favorite No. 2 La Salle.
Nov. 16, 2023
Enterprise Projects
To conclude my time as an undergraduate at Quinnipiac, I spent the Spring 2022 semester working on my senior capstone. I used what I learned about journalism in college to conduct interviews, write the article and create multimedia elements.
As a graduate student at QU, I spent my final two semesters as a student working on my master's capstone, further applying what I've learned with an extra year of classes.
While some student-athletes play professionally, most don’t. The value of being a student-athlete is still individually great.
May 19, 2022
Plenty of college athletes in the national spotlight continue on to play professional basketball. But what about student-athletes at lower levels of competition? What is next for them?
May 15, 2023
During my post-graduate year at Quinnipiac, I found a part time job at the Record-Journal daily newspaper in Meriden, Connecticut, as a sports reporter. The editor assigned me one or two local high school games each week, and I was responsible for writing a game-recap article. The deadline was sometimes as soon as 15 minutes after the game ended, so I'd write as the game was still being played, grab quotes, and send the story to the editor as quickly as possible. This was my first professional experience in the sports writing field.
During the spring semester of my senior year at Quinnipiac, I got an internship as a sports writer at BVM Sports. Over the course of the 10-week program, I wrote one article per week -- mostly about Quinnipiac or features local to Connecticut.
Quinnipiac men’s basketball loses three graduating seniors. Their stories prove inspirational, with two expected on-court leaders who overcame adversity and one unexpected walk-on who provided locker room leadership.
April 18, 2022
Friday night was a revenge win for the top-seeded Bobcats. In the best-of-three Men’s Eastern Collegiate Athletic Conference (ECAC) Hockey Tournament Quarterfinals, the Bobcats defeated eighth-seed St. Lawrence Saints in game one.
March 11, 2022
In the final year of my undergraduate degree, I took a broadcast journalism course as my senior capstone. The objective of the class was for us to create a 30-minute news show from scratch every week, with everyone's role rotating each show.
Having zero knowledge of broadcast journalism going in, I learned concepts such as how to put together news packages, how to write teleprompter scripts using ENPS, and how to conduct recorded or live-on-air interviews. Here are a few feature packages I created for the class.
As the local Hamden/New Haven reporter, I created a package on the topic of Connecticut's new "marijuana gifting bill." I interviewed community members to get their thoughts on how it might affect the legal status of marijuana for recreational use, as well as the local cannabis industry.
April 28, 2022
As the feature anchor, I created a package about the upcoming holiday weekend. I interviewed the on-campus staff chaplain for catholic life and the University Rabbi to gain perspective on how Quinnipiac prepares for its religious holidays.
April 14, 2022
With the Quinnipiac Bobcats men's ice hockey team preparing for its 2022 NCAA tournament run, I created a day-of PKG to cover how the University's staff and fans prepared. I interviewed a range of sources to get their perspectives.
March 24, 2022
Class Articles
Here are a few of my favorite articles that I wrote for classes as an undergraduate at Quinnipiac.
Nearly every park in NYC has a basketball hoop. The intensity of each game varies, from kids shooting the ball around to lifelong streetball players whose calling in life is to compete against one another.
Dec. 15, 2021
“What if you could change school to be more like a game?"
Dec. 10, 2021
April 30 notched the opening of the doors at Artspace New Haven for Footnotes and Other Embedded Stories—a group art exhibition featuring paintings, installations, videos, woodcuts, and sculptures from five local artists in the New Haven area.
May 3, 2022
