My name is Jason Cooke, and I am extremely honored and excited to present to you Valley Sports Daily, an all-encompassing media hub for comprehensive coverage of the Merrimack Valley Conference. As the editor of this new website, I will strive to promote student-athletes from all sports while managing a one-stop platform for schedules, standings, highlights, photos, game stories, features, and much more.
You may be familiar with HockomockSports.com, the leading media source for student-athletes, coaches, parents, and fans of the Hockomock League. It has been a privilege to work with founder and editor Ryan Lanigan and his team as we roll out a new branch of coverage in the MVC. There isn’t a more deserving high school conference in Massachusetts to be highlighted.
Before I uncovered my aspirations to become a sports journalist, I was a student-athlete of the MVC myself. A 2022 graduate of Tewksbury High School, I was a three-sport athlete in golf, hockey, and lacrosse for the Redmen.
For those of you who have experienced a game in The Valley, there’s something about high school athletic competitions in this conference that makes it a unicorn in the local sports scene. Sports are woven into the identities of the 11 member schools.
My earliest memory of the MVC came in 2011, when I made the trek to TD Garden from Tewksbury to watch the Redmen fight for the state championship. My seven-year-old self doesn’t remember much from the Tewksbury victory. But the image of thousands of hands exploding into the air after the game-winning overtime goal will always remain glued in my memory. It was that moment when I discovered what sports could do to a community.
It was a full-circle moment when I was a member of Tewksbury’s 2022 hockey state title team as a senior. I could see myself among the hundreds of kids lined up along the glass, experiencing the very same dream that had been planted in me some 14 years earlier.
I always kept moments like that with me when I unlocked my passion for sports writing at the high school level. As a freelancer with the Tewksbury/Wilmington Town Crier, Hockey Night in Boston, the Lowell Sun, and the Boston Herald, I have had the opportunity to see MVC teams bask in victory from the press box. I recently covered Billerica hockey’s state championship from TD Garden and Chelmsford baseball’s state title from Polar Park.
Chelmsford’s win in Worcester had everything that makes high school sports great. Late-game antics, clutch performances, and high-intensity baseball provided those on hand a performance for the ages. That’s what the box score said.
But beyond hits and strikeouts was a program yearning for its first state championship in the MIAA era, channeling the mentality of its hard-working town to deliver on the diamond. It wasn’t just a win for the 20-some players in the bowels of Polar Park. It was a win for Chelmsford. A win for The Valley.
I may not have known it, but it’s the passion, grit, and dedication riddled within the MVC that sparked my dream to be a journalist.
And whether I’m positioned in the press box at a Friday night football game, roaming the sidelines at a basketball, field hockey, or soccer game, or perched behind the backstop at a softball game, I am beyond thrilled to tell all the stories that make The Valley one of a kind.
