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Since its inception in 1970, the NFL’s Monday Night Football telecasts have become a cultural icon, drawing the attention of millions of fans across the country every week during the fall football season.
For three Mountlake Terrace journalists, the experience of joining the dozens of media representatives to cover this past Monday’s Seattle Seahawks-Minnesota Vikings game at CenturyLink Field is one they will never forget.
Ben Eyman, a senior at Mountlake Terrace High School and co-editor of the school’s Hawkeye student newspaper; Hawkeye photography co-editor Jake Paulsene and MLTnews photographer Jonah Wallace were able to be part of the press corp at Monday’s game in Seattle.
For Eyman, watching the game from the press box level and then being part of a postgame press conference outside the Vikings locker room ultimately led to penning an article posted on The Seattle Times website. But the published work isn’t the only memory Eyman is taking away from Monday night.
“The experience was amazing,” Eyman said, “From going down on the field at pregame to getting to eat with all of the professionals to writing down stats drive-by-drive. It was so great and I feel extremely lucky to get this opportunity.”
“It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that I will never forget,” Wallace said of shooting photos at CenturyLink Field. “Being shoulder-to-shoulder with the other photographers while taking pictures on Monday Night Football has been a dream for years.”
Getting Eyman, Wallace and Paulsene press passes to the game was facilitated by Hawkeye faculty advisor Vince DeMiero and Seattle Times sport reporter Adam Jude, a 1999 graduate of Terrace and former editor of the school’s student newspaper. The trio’s primary focus was on Minnesota Vikings rookie Devante Downs, a 2014 graduate of Terrace; Downs got some playing time on Monday with the Vikings’ special teams.
Downs is believed to be the only Mountlake Terrace High School graduate to every play for a NFL team. The 6-foot-2, 252-pound linebacker has seen action in 10 of the Vikings 13 games this year.
Wallace’s photos will remain a mainstay on the sports pages of MLTnews.com, MyEdmondsNews.com and LynnwoodToday.com for now, but he does have ambitions to take photos at other major sports contests.
“Next, I would love to shoot an NBA game,” Wallace said. “Shooting players of that caliber would be awesome!”
Eyman hopes his future includes covering many more big sporting events.
“The next stop for me is college,” Eyman said. “Sports journalism is what I would like to do with my career. I would love to keep covering major games like Monday’s, but for now will devote myself to covering sports and continuing to produce great journalism for the Hawkeye.”
— By Doug Petrowski
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