The Hutchinson Sports Arena, home of the NJCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament.

HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Sports fans often have a bucket list — a list of venues and events they would like to visit in their lifetime.

Mine is extremely long and many of mine seemed unachievable.

But in the past decade, I’ve gotten to cross a few more off thanks to my job.

In 2017, I was fortunate enough to cover the Little League World Series when the young sluggers from Lufkin made their way to Williamsport, Pennsylvania, and won the United States championship before falling to Japan in the World Series final.

In 2022, I got to cover a Wrestlemania at AT&T Stadium in Arlington. We can argue semantics on if pro wrestling is considered a sport or not, but I would absolutely classify Wrestlemania as a sporting event.

And then in 2024, more opportunities happened.

I covered the College Football National Championship between Michigan and Washington at NRG Stadium in Houston in January. In March, I covered the Sweet 16 and Elite Eight at the American Airlines Center in Arlington involving Duke, Houston, Marquette and North Carolina State. I had been to two Elite Eight games previously (2008 Texas vs. Memphis and 2015 Duke vs. Gonzaga), but being able to do so as a reporter was a different feeling.

In the summer, the MLB All-Star Game came to Arlington’s Globe Life Field, and I was able to provide coverage for the entire event, from the Futures Game to the Celebrity Softball Game to the Home Run Derby and then capping it off on the Tuesday night with the MLB All-Star Game. During that weekend, I also got to go to Fort Worth with photographer Michel Alfaro as we covered the MLB Draft, where former Bullard High School standout Hagen Smith was selected fifth overall by the Chicago White Sox.

That week also included the SEC Media Days, which I was able to cover for all four days in the midst of all of the MLB All-Star festivities.

January 2025 featured the Cotton Bowl, which happens every year and I’m always fortunate to get to go, but this year was different because it was a part of the new 12-team College Football Playoff, and the Cotton Bowl served as a national semifinal game between Texas and Ohio State. As they say in the SEC, it just meant more.

This past week, what I do for a living provided me another chance to cross something off of my sports bucket list.

For those that know me, they know that while I like a variety of sports, basketball tops the list, especially at the college and high school levels. And junior college basketball is something I’ve had an affinity for ever since my family moved to East Texas in the mid 1990s.

Going to Angelina College basketball games, where they played in Region XIV (formerly known as the Texas Eastern Conference), was one of my favorite things to do. The coaches, the players and the teams in the league were incredible.

In 1998, Angelina advanced to the NJCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament in a place called Hutchinson, Kansas. I followed the results from back in Lufkin on the local news because that was before social media and the ability to stream almost every game.

I eventually worked for the Angelina basketball program as a statistician. In 2005, we hosted the Region XIV Tournament, which was won by Paris, which eventually went to “Hutch,” as many call it, and won the national championship.

That was my last season with the Angelina basketball program as I began my work at various newspapers in East Texas. The Nacogdoches Daily Sentinel didn’t cover a junior college, but I still went to as many games as I could throughout the conference as a spectator, but I got to resume covering the league in 2013 when I worked at the Longview News-Journal, the Lufkin Daily News and now the Tyler Morning Telegraph.

From 2018-23, I wrote the junior college basketball previews for the entire state of Texas for Dave Campbell’s Texas Basketball Magazine.

I’ve been to a lot of junior college basketball games and written a lot of stories about junior college basketball, but one thing I had yet to do was go to Hutch. And I wasn’t really sure when the opportunity to go would happen.

But early last week, Ryan Silapan at the Panola Watchman suggested that if Panola College made the semifinals, that he was going to drive up on Friday and cover the Ponies’ semifinal game at 8 p.m. and then the championship would be at 1 p.m. the following day. He asked if I wanted to tag along. Trinity Valley was also in the national tournament with a chance to advance, as was Angelina.

Panola and Trinity Valley needed to win two games to reach the semifinals with Angelina needing to win three. Angelina won two games and lost in the quarterfinals, but Trinity Valley and Panola both won their two games to punch their tickets to the semifinals, meaning Ryan and I would be making the journey to Kansas to cover both teams.

With Trinity Valley and Panola meeting in the semifinals, we were guaranteed to be covering one of them in the championship game.

Ryan was leaving from Carthage, which is a little more than eight-and-a-half hours driving to Hutchinson. He stopped and picked me up in Lindale, and we made the trek through Oklahoma and into Kansas.

Getting a hotel was an adventure. As you can gather, this is a big event, so rooms in Hutchinson were booked solid for the week. We ended up staying in Wichita, and the short version is that the same lady was working the front desk of two of the possible hotels we were going to stay at that were across the street from each other, so she had to walk back and forth to help customers. But we got checked in and eventually made it to the Hutchinson Sports Arena on Friday night.

We watched South Plains take on Connors State in the first semifinal. South Plains featured former McDonald’s All-American Arterio Morris, who previously played at the University of Texas and the University of Kansas. I’ll let you look up why he is no longer at those places.

And then came the nightcap, the fourth meeting of the season between the Region XIV foes. Trinity Valley outlasted Panola 51-47 to advance to the national championship game for the first time in program history.

Finding something open to eat after the game wasn’t easy, but we landed at a place called Taco John’s. Thomas Bingham of the Longview News-Journal informed me that they are known for their Potato Olés, which are basically tater tots with a side of queso, and after having them with my meal, I can see why they are considered famous.

After a long night of writing, then came championship Saturday, where Trinity Valley took a 69-61 win over Connors State to capture its first national championship. Garrett Nuckolls, who I began covering as a freshman at LaPoynor High School and then at Bullard High School, had 17 points, five rebounds and four assists in the final game to earn all-tournament honors.

That concluded my time in the Hutchinson Sports Arena, which is a fantastic arena that just feels special when you walk into it. And you can also tell that the locals really support the event, which is probably why the tournament has remained there since 1949.

Before leaving for Kansas, my coworker Phil Hicks told me that the Carriage Crossing Restaurant and Bakery in Yoder, Kansas, was a must stop. We made sure to stop there and eat before we left, and it did not disappoint.

Then we made the long trip back through Oklahoma, where we encountered a bad hail storm, before eventually making it back to Texas.

I was glad to finally make it to Hutch. It is indeed a special place. And I will definitely be back, hopefully for more than two days next time.