Junior Dhatri Iyer is a sports editor for The Saratoga Falcon and a girls’ varsity basketball player. Although the worlds of basketball and journalism seem completely different in many ways, Iyer finds a way to seamlessly bridge her two main interests.
Having started basketball in third grade, she’s run with it ever since, initially playing in an Amateur Athletic Union team with Top Flight starting from middle school. Through basketball, Iyer picked up many skills in teamwork, communication and confidence, and she even found some of her closest friends.
“I really think the connections I’ve made with people on the team and the chemistry that we built are my favorite things about this sport,” Iyer said.
To her, basketball has always been more than just a game. She values the shared chemistry with her teammates on and off the court.
Off the court, Iyer finds a different kind of chemistry. When she was younger, Iyer wanted to be an author and always enjoyed reading newspapers and magazines. Now, her interests have shifted more toward writing shorter works, since the thought of composing an entire novel seems daunting.
“What I like most about journalism is just being able to tell the story of someone’s life to make something that I’m proud of,” Iyer said.
Magazines like The New Yorker inspire her appreciation of the art of writing and storytelling.
As a sports editor, Iyer edits around 10 to 15 stories every six weeks on school sports and other athletic content. Her experiences on the court have given her a better understanding of how games work. This knowledge helps her write about other athletes more accurately and effectively.
“I fell in love with sports from playing basketball. I also started watching sports more after that, so now I understand what players are doing on the screen, instead of just watching them run around,” Iyer said.
Other than basketball, Iyer also enjoys watching tennis, Formula 1, NFL and soccer. She goes to about three NBA and WNBA games each year — just two weeks ago, she also went to the Laver Cup Tennis Match in San Francisco.
From these close-up experiences, Iyer is able to take inspiration from the on-site sports journalists and apply it to her areas of writing by learning how and what interview questions are best to ask.
Her firsthand experiences as an athlete make sports journalism natural for her because of the shared values of responsibility.
“In journalism, everything you write reflects on the publication. The same thing is true in basketball — if you act a certain way on court, your whole team can be profiled in that sense too,” Iyer said.
While playing sports aids her ability in writing, it also works the other way around as well.
“Journalism has helped me become a much more effective communicator because a lot of it is about getting certain points across in the most efficient and effective way possible, just like we need in basketball,” Iyer said.
To Iyer, both basketball and journalism teach her lessons far beyond just a ball and words. The confidence she’s built through seeing her hard work pay off on the court has made journalism a lot less intimidating, especially with interviews — which she deems the most terrifying part.
Participating in a sport also takes up a huge amount of time. Although basketball takes up roughly three hours a day in season, the same amount of schoolwork is still waiting for her at home.
When schedules feel overwhelming, Iyer has learned to prepare ahead of time and not crack under pressure. This could mean getting extra help from teachers for schoolwork or carving out time for practices and meeting journalism deadlines.
“It can be really tough, but I think having that experience from a few years of doing this will help me in the future, especially when I’m under a lot of pressure,” Iyer said.
