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This story marks the 700th post made by me to this website.

For those that do not quite know me…my name is Xavier Sanchez. I am 27 years old and an Illinois native interested in having a forever job in sports (or even music).

Nine years ago, I wanted to establish a strong identity in the world of sports. As a high school student, that was no easy task. There were many doubters and peers of mine that laughed the idea off. I kept silent and let my work speak for itself.

It began with creating a Twitter and Facebook page that I treated as professional as possible.

The goal of the social media pages and later this website was to have them as places to store and share my thoughts and reporting of sports topics I follow closely. I had already had some practice running social media for my high school. At the start of my freshman year, I created a Twitter page to shared stuff that was happening throughout my high school. It would become the largest school page very quickly and stayed that way until far after my 2016 graduation.

I quickly got to work, sharing my thoughts and opinions on a range of national and local storylines. Some of them were more fun than serious, but the hope was always to have intriguing stories to draw in readers.

Senior year, I began incorporating photography into my coverage after being loaned a camera from my Aunt Pat. I quickly fell in love with that side of content.

Through my work, it’s helped land outside opportunities like covering the McDonalds All American Games, DePaul Games, assisting a national recruiting site, and even launching job opportunities during college and post grad. I even dabbled in covering politics and photographing galas and wedding engagements during my journey.

These are opportunities I have made possible all through taking a leap of faith in myself, in this website, and those interested in what I do.

I have dabbled in more than just writing and photography by doing video and audio content. During college, I helped bring back my school’s radio station and grew it to nearly 20 students and a handful of shows at our peak. Unfortunately, the pandemic cut it short but I continued our show as a podcast with my friends Tom Rhomberg and Nick Richter.

Currently, I work two jobs. One as a e-commerce lead at Jewel Osco in my hometown and, the other, as a freelance journalist/photographer. I am lucky and grateful to have the flexibility to do what I want, when I want but one day hope to take on the media world as my sole job. That starts with continuing this work and taking it more seriously.

I have made it my mission to be more consistent with my work. I want to become a stronger writer, photographer, podcaster, etc. Some days it can be discouraging as the views, likes, listeners, etc, might not be there but I try to look past that and understand not everything is for everyone.

This next year will be big.

The plan is to revamp the look of this website, get credentialed in more spaces, and bring back audio and visual content.

For now, I could use your help boosting this story and any social media accounts.

Please subscribe to this website and follow me on Facebook, Instagram (& here too), and Twitter.

I have plenty of stories, long and short, I have planned to write in the coming days and years. By following and interacting, it will help keep those pages near the top of your social media pages so you do not miss one of my posts.

I am so excited to share more with you soon.

Lastly, I want to say thank you again. Each interaction in person and online brings me so much joy. It means so much to hear from others whether it is a social media engagement or talking deeper on a topic I wrote a story or post about online.

Thank you and talk to you all soon.