Jim McAlister was passionate when it came to all sports

Sports writers are a different breed.

Mark White is Editor of The News Journal.

Many of them are die hard sports junkies, who really like sports and you have to be in order to do that job well.

Most of our sporting events take place either in the evening or on the weekends. There are long hours spent out at games at night, and sometimes long days trying to get a hold of coaches you need, which after a losing effort sometimes isn’t easy.

As I have told people interested in sports writer jobs, it’s a great job for someone, who is 22 years old and doesn’t have a spouse or a family.

As I wrote earlier, it takes a special kind of person to be a sports writer.

Then you have someone like former News Journal Sports Editor Jim McAlister, who was without a doubt the most passionate person I ever met when it came to sports.

Jim loved going to ballgames so much that he even went to ballgames on his days off.

Many a year when he was sports editor at the News Journal from 2003 to 2013, Jim’s vacation would consist of traveling to Florida over spring break to cover a local girls’ softball team playing in a tournament there and then sending us back a story and pictures to plug into the sports section that week.

They say something isn’t work if you love what you do, and for Jim that was most things about sports.

The News Journal was the second place where I worked with Jim. The first was the Sentinel Echo, which was my first job out of college. Jim was always willing to answer any question that you might have or to help you out if he could.

While he was sports editor here, I accompanied Jim to several playoff football games with me there taking the pictures and him taking notes and writing the stories. The road trips were always fun.

In addition, to his journalism career, Jim co-founded Kentucky Prep Softball to promote high school fastpitch softball across the state.

As part of that, Jim tabulated the votes for the weekly top 25, created and managed the East-West All Star Game, created and managed the Kentucky-Tennessee All Star Game, and put together a Kentucky High School Softball Preview.

Another passion of Jim’s that people might not realize was beauty pageants. Jim volunteered helping organize some over the years, and he also did beauty pageant judging for a time.

Jim retired from the News Journal in 2013 after a lengthy bout with various illnesses.

He died on June 8 at the age of 67.

Although I hadn’t talked to him in a few years, I will still miss him.

My condolences go out to his family. He was a good man, who will be missed by all who knew him.

Jim would probably never forgive me if I didn’t give a shout out before I conclude this column to the Whitley County High School Baseball team, which made its first ever appearance in the state tournament losing in the Elite Eight in Lexington.
I’m proud of this team, and I know Jim would be too along with the job Williamsburg did to give the team such a great send off the day before its game in Lexington.

I also want to take a minute to congratulate Williamsburg native and long-time WKYT news anchor Bill Bryant. Bill has been named to replace Sam Dick as the evening news anchor when Dick retires at the end of November.

As many in the community already know, Bill got his start broadcasting on WEZJ radio, and doing a newscast on TV 3, which used to be the local cable television access channel in Williamsburg.

I can think of few people more deserving of the promotion than Bill. In addition to being a good anchor, Bill is also one heck of journalist, which isn’t necessarily the case with every broadcaster that I ever met.

Bill knows news and is one of the foremost experts in the state on Kentucky politics too. He has been host of Kentucky Education Television’s “Comment on Kentucky” since 2015 in addition to his duties at WKYT.

Good luck with the new duties Bill, not that you will need it.