Brendan Hall

The first thing Brendan Hall, a University of Massachusetts Amherst alumni and high school sports writer for ESPN Boston, showed the group of Journalism 300 students on Monday was a press conference he had attended over the weekend. Brendan Durkin, a boy with down-syndrome, had scored had scored the last basket in the final seconds of the Newton North game. Afterwards, there was press conference that Durkin got to speak at.

Most reporters had left the game early. Newton North was a favorite to win and proved so. Some groups didn’t even send reporters. But they missed out Durkin’s special moment. “Honest to God, one of the coolest things I’ve ever done, being a part of that press conference,” said Hall in his heavy Boston accent to the class.

Hall then went on the show the class similar stories. A story about the Bruins game that happened after the Boston Marathon Bombing and the way people were connected. Another about the Mansfield Coach’s speech to his basketball team after they had just lost a big game.

And although he showed the class the team stats pages he and his colleague Scott Barboza had done, featuring all the teams in Mass and talked about the different kinds of recaps they did, the focus seemed to be on the people.

It wasn’t just about the numbers and the game itself, but also about the people inside the sports. And it was more so about the special moments. “Certainly motivates you to write something special. When it happens, you kick it into a different mode.”

Hall didn’t start out at ESPN, and wasn’t always a sports writer. While at UMass, he worked on The Daily Collegian writing not only about sports but also wrote the beat for the UMass police and some arts pieces. “You got to cast a large net,” said Hall as advice to the class, going on to say that having diversity in your work shows dedication and flexibility.

While at school, he has did three internships, including the Boston Globe. He graduated with a degree for journalism. He then got a job at Worcester Telegram and Gazette and later as a correspondent at the Boston Globe. By then, he has found his niche as a high school sports writer which he had discovered while doing the internship at the Boston Globe.

He then, along with now colleague Barboza, helped create the high school page for ESPN Boston. Though it was launched in 2009, and Hall joined the project in 2010, he has had a lot of influence by making sure that all the sports teams are covered, not just the ones in the immediate area. The teams are all accounting for, even Martha’s Vineyard.

“100 years from now, people are going to pull up your account, and that’s the coolest thing for me.”