By Buck Ringgold

Exactly 24 years ago to the day, November 10, 2000, I officially started work as a sportswriter for the Times Record newspaper in Fort Smith, Arkansas.

Prior to that, I had served as a sports editor for newspapers in Ville Platte, La., Kilgore, Texas, and Siloam Springs, Ark. But the move to Fort Smith afforded me the opportunity to write for a larger publication and the chance to see more teams and athletes than I saw at my previous stops.

I literally hit the ground running on that first day in Fort Smith, which coincided with the opening night of the high school football playoffs. A few weeks later, I was in the press box at Oklahoma State University’s Boone Pickens Stadium covering Sallisaw in the Class 4A state championship game.

Since then, I’ve seen some outstanding teams, players and games in the River Valley over a wide range of sports. From that day in November nearly a quarter-century ago, I’ve called the Fort Smith area home.

That remained the case even three years ago, when I made a monumental decision that at the time was greatly beneficial to myself and my career.

In the fall of 2021, I made the decision to leave the newspaper industry behind and take my talents to the World Wide Web, becoming a writer for the ScorebookLive high school sports website. At the time I joined, I was writing freelance stories with the belief that I would get hired on by them in a full-time position.

That gamble paid off in the spring of 2022 when I was appointed as a regional editor with SBLive. I was in charge of the websites covering Oklahoma and Louisiana, as well as a co-editor of the Texas site.

And for the last two-plus years, it was a blast. I got to cover state championship games at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans and the Lloyd Noble Center in Norman, Okla.

Along the way, I saw a softball team from extreme south Texas rally from a six-run deficit entering the bottom of the seventh in a state championship game, ending the game with a walk-off grand slam. I saw a girls basketball player in Louisiana hit a shot from beyond half court to win a state semifinal contest, and two nights later, she helped her team repeat as state champs. Last year in Texas, I got to see a totally dominant performance from then-Timpson football standout Terry Bussey (now playing at Texas A&M) in the state title game, helping the Bears win their first-ever championship.

Plus, I got to see some of the best-known high school football teams in those three states, from Jenks, Tulsa Union and Owasso in Oklahoma to DeSoto, Duncanville and Southlake Carroll in Texas, to John Curtis Christian, Haynesville and Ruston in Louisiana.

It was definitely the best job I ever had. And in late August, I began diving into the 2024 high school football season with great enthusiasm. For my money, it was going to be the best football season yet.

However, on September 19, my world and my dream, not to mention my life, drastically changed.

That morning, I received an e-mail from the owner of the company, inviting me to a mandatory meeting less than two hours later. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, he was probably giving us some good news.

The company seemed to be doing well, and in fact earlier this year, was acquired by a new company, which also has the legendary Sports Illustrated as part of its portfolio. We were also getting pretty good feedback for the most part from our stories.

But a few minutes later, I reread the e-mail and did a double take. I noticed that of the other people that were asked to attend the meeting, it didn’t include everyone in the company. In fact, there were about 15 others on the list.

Uh-oh. It couldn’t be good. Could it be the unthinkable?

Moments later, my worst fears were realized. At that meeting, we learned that we were being laid off, with the current climate shift in sports journalism being cited.

Just like that, my dream, not to mention my life, was shattered. My dream job was gone.

Needless to say, I felt the wide range of emotions. Shock. Anger. Outrage. Depression.

But still, to this day, I have no regrets over the decision I made three years ago. I knew the risks involved, and until that fateful day, I enjoyed every day that I was employed by SBLive.

With the passage of days however, there are a few more emotions I’m feeling. Determined. Resilient. Optimistic.

Maintaining a belief that I am still currently in the “prime” of my sports journalism career, I also made a vow to get “back in the game.” Which leads me to this brand new venture. 

It happened a few weeks ago with a text from Rick Harvey, one of the coaches (who later got into administration as an athletic director) I had gotten to know in the time I spent living in the River Valley. He started up a Facebook page dedicated to area sports called Arklahoma Sports, but had just started up a website and was seeking someone to run things.

So, Coach Harvey (I still refer to him as Coach) thought I can be that someone to further enrich sports coverage in the area and beyond.

I accepted, and now I am thrilled to say I am now the managing editor of ArklahomaSports.com. It will be a combination of Arklahoma Sports and 4States SportsScene, covering high school and college sports pertaining to Eastern Oklahoma, Western Arkansas, Northwest Louisiana and Northeast Texas.

That’s very familiar territory on my end.

I covered the Arklahoma region with the Times Record. Plus, I am a native of the Ark-La-Tex region, having been born in Texarkana, Texas, and raised in nearby Ashdown, Arkansas, so I’m still very familiar with the sports in my old neck of the woods. I also covered events in those four states of Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas while with SBLive.

And just like I did when I first arrived to the Fort Smith area nearly a quarter-century ago, we’re getting this thing off the ground in time for the upcoming football playoffs.

Our goal is to provide top-quality high school and college sports coverage to the area, from Fort Smith to Texarkana, from Shreveport to Longview, from Idabel to Sallisaw. But as with any new venture, there will be growing pains involved.

Everything won’t go as smooth and efficient as planned. It will be a work in progress, there may be some trial and error, but we hope that you will enjoy the content that we’ll be rolling out in the coming weeks.

Keep in mind that I may not be able to attend as many games as I used to in the past. But with the advent of live streaming and social media, it’s readily more available to keep up to date with a wide array of sporting events from my own living room.

At the very least, though, we want to get scores. And we want to mention as many athletes as possible to help give their respective teams victory.

In addition, I’m big on cranking out some columns and features on the fly.

We’re also hoping to get a few sponsors involved, and with that in mind, I would love to talk to any prospective advertisers and even investors. Reach out to us via e-mail at realarklahomasports@gmail.com, and we’ll go from there.

Also, we’ll still have the Arklahoma Sports Facebook page, but Coach Harvey will mainly be in charge of that. The website will be somewhat separate from the Facebook page in terms of content, but we will have a link to the Facebook page, and the Facebook page will run stories that appear on this site.

So, I want to invite each and every one of you to partake in this website. Whether you enjoy the content or not is entirely up to you.

Hopefully, this website will be a rousing success. But regardless of how successful it becomes, at least I have been able to live up to my vow to get “back in the game.” And I’ll get the chance to have this football season still end up being the best one I’ve covered.

It’s just part of my never-ending determination to continue to give you some of the best sports copy around. My dream job might not ever be regained, but my dream of continuing to write about sports will never be extinguished.

And who knows, with some time, effort and patience, this could turn out to be a much better dream job than ever before.

I’m more than eager to continue what I’ve been doing, especially after what I started on this date exactly 24 years ago. I found my home then, and I hope this new beginning will end up as my eternal home.

Buck Ringgold | @Bucks_Ballpark | realarklahomasports@gmail.com