University of Georgia Athletics
Sims Enjoying Making, Reporting News
December 11, 2015 | Cross Country
By John Frierson
UGAAA Staff Writer
Zack Sims runs. He also tells stories. Sometimes Zack Sims thinks about those stories while he runs.
The Georgia senior cross country and distance runner loves sports, he has since he was very young, and loves writing and talking about sports. He's also eager to tell people's stories, as I am telling his right now. Sims is immensely charming and likable, which helps when he's the interviewer, as it helps now as the interviewee.
"I think what you do is cool; I think it's just cool to tell people's stories," he said. "Everyone has a story and some people's stories are super-compelling, crazy stories, and it's fun to tell a story like that."
A month ago, Simms and Georgia's men's and women's teams wrapped up their fall season at the NCAA South Regional Cross Country Championships in Tuscaloosa, Ala. Simms placed eighth in the men's 10-kilometer race, leading the Bulldogs and helping Georgia to a fourth-place finish.
Sims earned All-Region honors with the Top-10 finish, as he did the last time he ran cross country for the Dogs in 2013. Sims redshirted in 2014. At the SEC Championships in late October, Sims placed 12th and earned second-team All-SEC honors.
"From an individual standpoint, I think it went pretty well," Sims said of his final cross country season. "I thought I raced really well and I was happy with the way I fought and battled."
After a short break, the distance runners have already turned their attention to the winter indoor season, which begins next month.
Georgia distance coach Patrick Cunniff said Sims has worked hard and improved dramatically during his career. He also said Sims "is absolutely both a lead-by-example guy and he's probably one of the truest representations of the type of guy that we've built our program around."
By that Cunniff meant a runner from Georgia (Sims is from McDonough), that loves the University of Georgia and is driven by the opportunity to race in the red and black and take the program to new heights. He's also a very good teammate, Cunniff said.
"He's got a lot of enthusiasm and as a Grady Journalism School student, he is both articulate and media savvy," Cunniff said. "I think he's good at communicating both to his teammates and the people around him."
So with that going for him, he'd be a natural for TV, right?
"He'd probably have to work in a Southern market, with his Henry County twang," Cunniff joked.
Because of the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication student's schedule this fall semester, Sims often had to do part of his training alone, before dawn. He'd get in a few miles on his own and then meet up with his teammates for a bunch more, then head back alone to get cleaned up for class. He also sometimes had to do afternoon work on his own.
"I'm in Grady Newsource, which is like the big final step in the journalism, so we do a live newscast two days a week," Sims said. "We'll come in in the morning, pitch our stories, go out and shoot, come back and edit and then it goes on the air. It's like the real deal and you get the full experience."
"That can be really hard to handle while also doing athletics, because it can be a lot. I'll get to class at 8:30 in the morning and I'm not done until 6 p.m. It's kind of a lot."
While running with his teammates, Sims doesn't think about the stories he's working on, whether he's writing them or doing a Grady Newsource TV report. When he's on his own pounding out the miles, however, he's got some time to mentally spread all the pieces of a story out and start to put them together in some kind of order.
He's not the first writer who has put things together in his or her head while exercising.
"It can definitely be kind of helpful," Sims said. "One, you kind of just get away (from the computer) for a little while, and sometimes I feel like I can just think clearer when I'm running, which allows me to maybe map out the whole story."
Sims' writing with the Grady Sports Bureau program has appeared in multiple publications, including the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the Athens Banner-Herald. He said seeing an article of his in a major metropolitan paper like the AJC was cool.
"I went out and bought a couple of copies, just to see my name, and I think my friends were more amazed by it than I was," he said.
One story he's done that stands out is the article he did, that appeared in the Banner-Herald, on Georgia swimmer Brittany MacLean. An oft-injured Olympian from Canada, MacLean has won multiple NCAA titles at Georgia, and she competes and fights through injuries with the toughness of a hockey player, which she also was for years.
"It was interesting because I'm a student-athlete and she's a student-athlete, and I'm the one interviewing her and writing her story," he said. "I felt like I got really into the story and she has a crazy story as it is."
Sims is majoring in both journalism and statistics. Now, as analytics are becoming a bigger and bigger part of sports every year, and the world of fantasy sports spreads with each passing season, there's never been a better time to put those two areas of study together.
"I love reporting and things like that, but I'm also trying to weave in the stats, just because it feels like it gives me a leg up, I feel like," he said. "One thing I've looked into a lot is media analytics or analytics with a sports team. But if I had to do just journalism, I would love to be a beat writer or something for a pro team or college team. I'd prefer football, but I'm pretty open-minded."
Sims admits to being the guy when he's watching a sporting event with his buddies that offers non-stop commentary.
"Sometimes they probably appreciate it and sometimes they're probably like, shut up," he said. "That's just the way I am."
Don't ever change.
John Frierson is the staff writer for the UGA Athletic Association and curator of the ITA Men's Tennis Hall of Fame. You can find his work at: Frierson Files. He's also on Twitter: @FriersonFiles and @ITAHallofFame.
