Chris Abshire
Chris Abshire connects the high school and community sports scene to its fans through a mix of live game coverage, predictions, rankings and recognition pieces for the Coloradoan. He works on the sports desk with a particular focus on high school athletics in the Fort Collins area and Northern Colorado, while also covering select college and professional teams in the region. His coverage stands out for its real-time reporting and interactive formats that invite readers to follow games as they happen, weigh in on polls and celebrate standout local athletes.
High school football live coverage and analysis
High school football is the backbone of Abshire’s work, where he regularly runs live blogs and recaps from stadiums around the Fort Collins area.
He provides in-game updates from venues such as PSD Stadium, French Field and Wellington Middle-High School, tracking scoring swings, key plays and final results in Colorado High School Activities Association competition. His live coverage spans season openers, rivalry matchups and top-division contests, including detailed accounts of Fort Collins’ unbeaten start and close wins in 5A play.
Alongside the real-time reporting, he writes prediction columns that pick outcomes for Fort Collins-area teams, including PSD schools, Windsor and select Northern Colorado matchups, and keeps a running record of his picks over the season. He also produces pieces on statewide high school football rankings and the evolving methods behind playoff qualification, helping readers understand how local teams fit into the broader CHSAA landscape.
This combination of live updates, forecasts and context gives his football coverage a continuous, week-by-week narrative that follows teams from preseason through the heart of the schedule.
Spotlighting local high school athletes
A second through-line in Abshire’s coverage is sustained attention to individual high school athletes and their achievements across multiple sports. He oversees recurring features tied to Blue Federal Credit Union, including a preseason “Top Boys Athlete” recognition and ongoing Athlete of the Week polls for Fort Collins-area high school boys.
These pieces not only highlight standout performances in sports like tennis but also invite fans and community members to vote and to submit nominations directly to him for future weeks. Beyond weekly polls, he compiles broader watchlists, such as a spring sports package that profiles nearly 100 local athletes across baseball, soccer, swimming and other disciplines. Those roundups frame the seasonal landscape of high school athletics and identify players expected to shape the year across multiple programs.
By combining granular game reporting with structured recognition programs, Abshire builds a consistent platform for local athletes to be seen and celebrated throughout the school year.
Community sports, college teams and fan engagement
Abshire’s role extends beyond football to a wider slate of community sports, including volleyball events and multi-team showcases. He has covered tournaments and match days from arenas like Moby, delivering live scores and updates as multiple matches unfold.
His spring sports coverage touches track, baseball, soccer and swimming, reflecting an effort to capture the breadth of local high school competition rather than focusing on a single marquee sport. His author biography notes responsibilities that include community sports, local running and regional professional teams such as Northern Colorado soccer clubs, placing his high school beat within a wider local sports ecosystem.
Professional profiles also describe his work on college athletics, including Colorado State football and basketball and broader Mountain West coverage, adding another layer to his portfolio when major college seasons intersect with local high school schedules. Abshire’s storytelling consistently incorporates interactive elements, from fan voting on topics such as favorite high school mascots to ongoing polls and predictions that encourage readers to follow along week to week. He regularly invites submissions for Athlete of the Week and uses those nominations to inform future coverage, tying his reporting directly to input from coaches, families and fans.
The result is a sports beat built around live information, accessible explanations and steady community participation across high school and community sports.
4 more sports journalists.
Adair Reid
Adair Reid is a sports columnist for The Cavalier Daily who covers Virginia men’s programs with a blunt, fan-aware voice that treats them as long-term projects rather than one-off games. He focuses on trajectory, legacy and risk, using opinion columns to question coaching decisions and program strategy while grounding his arguments in recent results, records, tournament performance and roster realities. Men’s lacrosse is a recurring subject, and his work on the program’s coaching change shows how he uses a single decision to examine overall health, standards and competitive standing. He frames games in terms of stakes, identity and institutional expectations, emphasizing postseason implications, recruiting, national perception and alignment with a championship standard. He writes mostly in the first person only when needed, keeps the spotlight on institutional choices and brings analysis-first, evidence-based judgment to Virginia’s flagship men’s teams.
Adam Stern
Adam Stern covers the business of motorsports and combat sports at Sports Business Journal, focusing on how sponsorships, media deals and new events reshape racing and fighting. His beat includes NASCAR, IndyCar, Formula 1, NHRA, rallycross, UFC and boxing. He tracks brands, broadcasters, manufacturers, promoters and streaming platforms, with reporting on sponsorship strategy, rights deals, original content, series growth, team projects and technical regulations. He examines how Cadillac’s Formula 1 entry supports broader marketing aims, how F1 Academy builds commercial momentum and whether new MMA promotions can challenge UFC. His work includes short speed reads on deals and longer features on multi-party investments. He reports on the money and strategy behind the action, treating motorsports and combat sports as connected marketplaces shaped by branding, dealmaking and media innovation.
Albert Burneko
Albert Burneko writes about how systems of power bear down on ordinary people, using sports, politics, technology, food, and domestic life as entry points. He is an assignment editor and writer at Defector and part of its founding ownership group. His politics and capital reporting examines how policy, policing, and public rhetoric turn into harm for specific people, centering victims and vulnerable people. He also covers artificial intelligence, media criticism, and technology’s effects, asking who benefits and who absorbs the costs. His domestic writing focuses on parenting, bodily discomfort, and everyday frustration. His recurring Chefector column turns cooking failures into comic studies of impatience, ego, and routine. He writes sharp reported essays, first-person dispatches, mock explainers, and sports-adjacent guides. His work combines moral seriousness, comic voice, close attention to ordinary life, and a focus on how people live under larger systems.
Albert Samaha
Albert Samaha is a sports investigative reporter who uses games to examine how power, money and culture shape players, workers, fans and communities. He works in The Washington Post sports section, covering global tournaments, migration, fan culture, sports betting, match-fixing, ownership, NIL money, football safety, participation gaps and the changing culture of women’s basketball. His reporting connects events on the field to decisions in boardrooms, betting markets, government offices and law enforcement. He previously reported for BuzzFeed News and wrote for the Village Voice, San Francisco Weekly and the Riverfront Times. His work has also appeared in The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, The New York Times and The Paris Review. He writes long, deeply reported stories that combine narrative scenes, data analysis, public records, medical records and other documents.