courtesy photo Cottage Grove native Woody Wommack is one of three sportswriters at the Naples, Fla. Daily News. Wommack will offer perspective on Sunday's Super Bowl from Miami.

Woody Wommack never intended to become a sports writer, but this week he will be in Miami giving readers the inside scoop about the upcoming battle between the Indianapolis Colts and the New Orleans Saints.

Wommack, a 2001 CGHS grad, and his family moved to Cottage Grove from Yoncalla when he was in the fifth grade. He has had quite a journey since writing for the Cottage Grove Sentinel in 2002 until today, having landed a position as one of three sportswriters at the Naples Daily News, a 100,000 circulation newspaper in Naples, Florida.



Q: Did you play sports growing up in Cottage Grove?

WW: I played sports all through middle school and I played high school football a couple of years. I was injured my junior year, so I stopped playing football and got into media. I started announcing games at the high school and in my senior year and first year out of high school I was the public address announcer for all the basketball and volleyball games. I worked for KNND announcing the CGHS baseball games while I was at Lane Community College. I also worked at the Cottage Grove Sentinel from September 2001until September 2002.





Q: How did you get arrive on the East Coast from Cottage Grove?

WW: I decided I wanted to get away from the area and in the fall of 2002 I moved to North Carolina with some of my family. Then I moved down to Orlando, Florida to work and go to college at the University of Central Florida, which had 42,000 students on its campus. By the way, most people don’t know it’s the third largest university in the United States.



Q: How was your experience at UCF?

“It was good. I really enjoyed it. They had a specialized journalism program where you had to apply to get into it. That drew me in because despite being a giant school, the class sizes were capped at 17 students per class. It was a really good environment and gave me a chance to learn a lot, do internships and cover sporting events and teams such as the Orlando Magic NBA team.”



Q: So, are you saying your CGHS education and experience at the CG Sentinel attributed to your getting into the journalism program at UCF?

WW: “Yes, I think it helped. I never planned on being a writer when I left Cottage Grove. I liked to do radio and stuff like that and I still do make radio appearances when asked. One thing I can say about Cottage Grove High School in the late 90s, is they had a lot of computer classes I took with Marilyn Pittman. The skills I learned in those classes, like Microsoft Office and the things I learned from here, I’m still using today, believe it or not, to be ahead of my co-workers and other people in the field; you know, learning how to build websites and stuff like that. She was showing us how to do that in 2000. She was a big help and I did learn a lot about computers while at CGHS. I think that served me pretty well.”

Q: Where did you do your internship?

WW: I interned at the Orlando Sentinel and started writing for them on a freelance basis while he was still in school. I really got into freelance. I started doing a ton of stuff and slowly built my network, and by the time I graduated from college I’d been published in 15 states. I graduated in the spring of 2008 from UCF and during that time from the spring of ’08 until I started working here at the Naples Daily News in April of 2009, I had been published in 27 states writing for publications such as: USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, Miami Herald, San Jose Mercury News, the Dallas Morning News. Basically anywhere you could imagine, I was doing freelance work for papers all over country.



Q. What kind of stories did you cover as a freelance writer?

WW: When I was free-lancing I did anything anybody wanted me to do. I covered everything from rodeo to the NFL. That was kind of my shtick for awhile…as long as it had to do with sports I was down to do it. When teams came in from out-of-town, I would work for the out-of-town paper.

Growing up in a town like Cottage Grove gives you an interesting background that a lot of people don’t have who grow up as a rich kid from Ft. Lauderdale. They don’t have the same exact experience of me growing up as the son of a logger in Cottage Grove.



Q: So, what are you doing now in Naples, Florida?

WW: I was hired by the Naples Daily News, which is a Scripps company. I’m one of three sportswriters here and I cover the pro hockey team called the Florida Everblades. I was never in to hockey, and it was not something I saw myself getting into, but I enjoy it now. I’m one of only three employees from the whole Scripps Company that is going to the Super Bowl. We’re covering it for the newspapers in 13 other cities.



Q: What is your assignment(s) at the Super Bowl?

WW: I will be covering the teams and writing feature stories on the players. I’ll also have a blog that details my experience and I’ll also be doing a lot of multi-media production. I’ll be trying to bring in the readers like they’re there. I won’t be providing hardcore football analysis. I’ll be providing more like, ‘what’s it like here in Miami and to experience the Super Bowl.



Q: Who do you think will win?

WW: I really don’t have an NFL team, but my money’s on the Colts to win, just because I think Peyton Manning is one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time, if not the greatest. I grew up as a Joe Montana fan, but I honestly think there’s no way Indianapolis is going to lose.



Q: To drop a few names, who are some of the sports stars you have interviewed?

WW: Dwight Howard, LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Shaq O’Neal, Brandon Roy, Greg Oden… I covered the NBA finals when the Magic played the L.A. Lakers and I was on the court when the Lakers won the championship trophy. I also wrote a story about Tim Tebow back in August. It made national news, was picked up by the A.P. and even read on the air on ESPN’s SportsCenter.



Q: What are your plans for the future?

WW: This isn’t the end stop for me, that’s for sure. But right now I really enjoy it and I’ve had a lot of opportunities so far. I’m going to the Super Bowl and I’ve only worked here for eight months.

I’m working hard and my goal is eventually to cover either an NBA team or college football team. I’d also like to get back in radio, but that’s on the back burner while my writing career is doing well.



Q: Do you stay in touch with what’s going on in Oregon?

WW: “I still watch every Ducks’ game and I still watch every Blazers game. I’m still an Oregon boy at heart even though I don’t get out there very often. That last time was in 2006. I talk often with my good friend Brent Haberly. I don’t exactly miss it, but I did have some good times there growing up in the Willamette Valley definitely made me the guy I am today, that’s for sure.



Wommack’s mother Carol lives in the Cottage Grove, and you can follow Woody’s Super Bowl coverage at: naplesnew.com/superbowl