Steven Falk
Steven Falk is a longtime sports reporter at the Asbury Park Press who focuses on New Jersey scholastic sports with particular depth in high school and college wrestling. His work stands out for detailed, procedural coverage of governing body decisions and legal disputes alongside close tracking of individual athletes as they move from high school programs into college teams such as Rutgers. He draws on decades of experience covering local sports to explain how rulings, hearings and schedules affect wrestlers, coaches and schools, rather than just reporting scores.
High school wrestling and Anthony Knox
Falk’s recent coverage of high school wrestling has centered on Anthony Knox and the fallout from the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association’s decision to strip Knox of his 2025 126-pound state championship. He breaks down the controversies committee’s 8-0 vote, the cited violations of the sportsmanship policy and bench rule, and the specific incident at the District 25 Tournament at Collingswood High School that triggered the case.
His reporting explains that Knox, who had won the title on the mat with an 18-4 major decision, is now officially listed as a three-time state champion and that the 2025 state title will remain vacant. Falk gives readers the exact language and positioning of the NJSIAA and Knox’s attorney, including statements confirming dismissal of claims with prejudice and affirming that the committee’s factual findings and decision stand. He also situates the decision within Knox’s broader wrestling career, noting his status as a freshman at Rutgers and expectation to start at 125 pounds, connecting high school records to college opportunity. The combination of procedural detail, precise timelines and athlete-level impact distinguishes his wrestling coverage from typical game recaps.
Rutgers wrestling schedule and transition stories
Falk extends his high school wrestling reporting into the college level by covering Rutgers wrestling news and schedules with an eye on former New Jersey standouts. In coverage of the Rutgers wrestling 2026–27 season schedule, he writes under an Asbury Park Press byline and foregrounds Knox as a former St. John Vianney star, noting that Knox was a four-time state champion on the mat before the NJSIAA stripped his 2025 title.
He links schedule news to the expected debut and role of Knox as a freshman, giving readers context on how a high-profile high school career translates into collegiate expectations.
Falk also curates a photo-driven piece documenting Knox’s high school career and his move to Rutgers, highlighting moments from tournament action and showing the legal and disciplinary saga’s courtroom and municipal hearing phases. By pairing schedule and roster updates with visual and narrative reminders of an athlete’s path through controversy to college competition, he keeps Rutgers wrestling coverage anchored in New Jersey’s scholastic wrestling history.
Scholastic football, baseball and extended local beat
Beyond wrestling, Falk’s beat at the Asbury Park Press includes scholastic football, scholastic wrestling, scholastic baseball and some horse racing. He has covered local sports for various newspapers for 31 years, giving him a long view of trends in high school programs, coaching changes and conference competition. His author biography notes that he joined the Asbury Park Press in 2007 after covering local sports at the Ocean County Observer from 1989 to 2007 and the Daily Register from 1986 to 1989, indicating a continuous focus on high school and community-level athletics across multiple mastheads.
This longevity underpins his reporting on current issues in scholastic sports, including disciplinary cases like Knox’s and the implications of governing body decisions for teams and athletes. The mix of football, baseball, wrestling and horse racing on his current beat means he can situate any single controversy or standout season within a wider picture of how local sports operate over time.
Long-term focus on local governance and athlete pathways
Falk’s work consistently returns to how rules, committees and courts shape the paths of individual athletes through New Jersey’s sports systems.
In the Knox coverage, he details committee votes, policy language and court orders while also noting career records, title counts and the transition into Rutgers wrestling, making governance decisions understandable in terms of concrete consequences for one wrestler’s trajectory. Across his current beat, his longevity in local sports reporting allows him to connect present disputes and schedule announcements to decades of observing how similar issues played out in earlier eras. That combination of procedural reporting, athlete-focused storytelling and long experience is the through-line in his sports coverage.
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.