By Jacob dachowski, Velocity Contributor

Ethan Holesha remembers the moment he entered the emotional, heartbreaking, passion-filled gauntlet that is being a sports fan. 

“The Bulls beat the defending champions in overtime, and Ben Gordon had, like, 45 points,” he says. “We were in a suite, and my dad was like, ‘Oh, do you want ice cream? Do you want to eat?’ and I’m like, ‘Dude, no.’ I’m locked into this game, and I’m like six years old.”

After getting his start in journalism at Moraine Valley in 2020, Holesha has turned his passion for sports into a career. Holesha transferred from Moraine and went on to obtain a degree in journalism with a minor in recreation, sport and tourism from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Now, he’s working as a digital producer for the news network WCIA, a CBS affiliate in Champaign. 

But his career path was not so straightforward. Even with a passion for sports, Holesha’s first career choice was actually nuclear engineering.

“Funny enough, I applied to the University of Illinois my senior year for nuclear engineering, which is a very big difference,” Holesha said. He had taken AP classes in high school toward that goal, thinking he just wanted a career where he could “make a lot of money.”

After high school, he was taking a calculus class at Moraine Valley when he started to see that he wouldn’t be happy with engineering as his career.

“The teacher that I had, Peter Keep, he was a great teacher, but I’m like, just with the math classes, yeah, I could be making a lot of money, but I would not be happy whatsoever.”

After his first semester in fall 2019, he met with his counselor, who helped him decide to take a chance on a new path.

“She’s like, ‘Well what do you like?’ and I’m like, ‘Well, I love sports,’ and she’s like, ‘Well, what are your strong suits in school?’ and I said, ‘Writing,’ and she’s like, ‘Well, why don’t you think about becoming a journalist?’ and I’m like, ‘OK. You know, that sounds good.’”

He enrolled in JRN 111-Media Writing, taught by Lisa Couch, who encouraged him to write sports stories in class that would be submitted to the student newspaper for publication. 

“When I first started, I did a profile on Coach Chappetto, the old Moraine Valley head basketball coach,” Holesha said. “It was cool to learn stories about athletes and coaches and get behind the scenes. When you interview these people, you find out new things, and I just find that very fascinating. So ever since then, I just knew this was the career for me.”

The profile not only confirmed his new passion, but it also won an award from the Illinois Community College Journalism Association.

“I won a first-place plaque for a sports article,” he said. “And I’m just like, ‘Dang, that’s pretty cool.’”

The following semester, Couch recruited Holesha to serve as sports editor for the student newspaper, The Glacier. Later, in his final semester, he became managing editor for the publication.

Holesha said Couch played a big role in his success: “She is the reason that I even considered this as a career. She was always so helpful and gave me opportunities.”

She also encouraged him to follow his dream to start a sports podcast. Holesha recruited his friend, fellow Moraine Valley student Joey Fernandez, to co-host a podcast called The Glacier Guys, where they talked sports and interviewed players and coaches.

Holesha said he enjoys the podcast Pardon My Take: “Not only do you get sports knowledge on there, but those guys are so entertaining. I want to be in a position where I can do something like that, even just to have it on a smaller scale.”

Together, Holesha and Fernandez did just that, and even had one episode win a third-place award from the ICCJA. 

“It was cool to get a little recognition for that,” Holesha said.

However, there were some funny moments when they first started.  Fernandez, who also went on to focus on journalism and become sports editor for the student newspaper at Lewis University, recalled a funny moment when he and Holesha first started recording The Glacier Guys.

“It was one of our first podcasts that we ever did. We recorded most if not all of the podcast with our microphones not working,” he says, laughing. “We didn’t really realize until afterwards.”

When Holesha transferred to the University of Illinois, he wanted to get involved with a student publication there. He applied to work for the Daily Illini but wasn’t accepted. However, he never gave up. He took a chance with a sports page there he was following.

“On Twitter all the time I’m following this page The Champaign Room because they cover all the Illinois sports, and obviously, I’m a huge sports fan.”

So Holesha just took a chance and applied: “I’m like, I don’t know how anything works over there, but I’m just going to shoot them a message. ‘Hey, here is my resume from Moraine. I want to get involved, start covering games.’”

After working on practice articles, he was offered the chance to be a beat reporter. He covered some football games, but he mainly covered basketball. He learned how to meet tight deadlines, as he had to write the articles as the games were happening.

“Literally, you type the article during the game, and as soon as the clock hits zero, you need that article up,” he said.

He was able to boost his resume and learn new things, and he also had some amazing experiences such as attending the BIG10 media day and talking to famous former athletes Mark Ingram and Maria Taylor.

“That’s when it really started to be like, ‘Alright, this is really feeling official. It doesn’t even feel like I’m a student reporter anymore,” Holesha said.

Holesha believes taking the chance to apply for that job helped him be where he is today. “That’s a big reason why I landed the job I have now. If I didn’t have The Champaign Room on my resume, I would not be in the position that I’m in right now.”

Couch says she always thought journalism was for Holesha. She is married to a longtime sports journalist and saw Holesha’s potential early on.

“He was curious; he was interested in people and in topics, and he was interested in sports,” she said. “You have to be interested in more than just the nitty-gritty of the games. You have to be interested in the people and how to make sports interesting to non-sports fans. And I think Ethan was always good at that.”

Ethan Holesha has taken chances and worked hard along the way, and those chances have helped him turn his passion into a career. Even so, he had mixed feelings when he was offered the job at WCIA shortly after graduating.

“It was a sigh of relief,” he says, “I thought I’d have a little more time to just chill at home with my family and stuff. But more than anything, I was just happy I was able to get a job with a real news network.”

Holesha did a lot in his college career and believes getting involved can go a long way.

“Get involved in as much as you can,” Holesha said. “Teachers tell you all the time to get involved and put yourself out there. That is the best advice that you can receive. Try not to take that for granted.”

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PHOTO FROM WCIA