It is hard to believe that it has been just a little over a year since I was hired by the Times-Gazette to cover sports in Bedford County.

The old adage that "time flies when you are having fun" has never been more true or more appropriately stated as it applies to my experience.

I will never forget the first time that I read an article that I had pecked out with my own two fingers, or the incredible pride that engulfed me when I saw the words 'Jimmy Jones, Sports Writer' in the heading. That article is framed and hangs in a prominent place in my home to this day.

I have always been a voracious reader and I have often wondered since I was very young what it would be like to write in a forum where I could share my thoughts with a wide range of people with similar interests.

Sports have always been the one subject that I could relate to with folks of all ages and walks of life and for the most part I could converse in a fairly informed manner.

So when I saw the advertisement in the T-G one day, I told my wife Shawna that I was going to apply. Of course she reminded me that I often times butcher the English language, that I type exactly eight words a minute on a good day, and that I couldn't spell cat if you spotted me the 'C' and the 'T', but in the long run she did what she has always done, she supported my decision.

No one was more surprised than I when sports editor Danny Parker gave me a call and, after talking with me a few times to get a feel for whether I actually knew anything about sports, sent me on trial assignments to cover Community preseason football at just about the time they were hiring a new head coach.

I must not have botched it as bad as I thought, or Danny was really hard up for a reporter at the time, but I got the job.

It has been an experience that I will never forget. I have met many people and made many friends in a variety of places ranging from youth sports to the Southeastern Conference and the National Football League.

I have had the extreme privilege of recognizing our Bedford County student athletes accomplishments in print as well as with pictorial tribute and it never ceases to amaze me how much these kids know about the sports they play.

We do not typically interview or quote the athletes after games for a variety of reasons but, the few times that I have, I have been impressed.

Community basketball player Jessica Thompson, a freshman, gave me an interview on the night that she scored 32 points in the District 9-A tournament last season that even the most polished pro player would have been proud of. Ryan Sheehan, Ali Vincent and Justin Stallings also come to mind as articulate individuals. It is an area that I will try to expand upon in future seasons.

As for coaches, Kenny Parker, Tony Garrette, Chad Spencer, Mike Edmondson, Shane Shoemake, Anita Spann, Stephanie Sutton and Chris Parker have always been very accommodating and very well spoken in describing their teams' trials and tribulations over the course of a season. Johnnie Frost will flat talk you out of tape, but he is a good interview nonetheless and always quotable. Ditto James Garcia.

Each of these coaches is well respected within the sporting community and, though we have not always seen eye to eye, I am eternally grateful for their kindness and cooperation and for the time that they spend with our youth on a daily basis.

These folks often times go above and beyond the call of duty, sacrificing personal lives and resources for nothing more than their love of the game and the intense desire to see young people reach their fullest potential. It is a noble profession. They make it so. We should spend more time in appreciation and thanking them instead of second guessing or criticizing their every move.

I wouldn't trade places with anyone. I do this job for love and that is a good thing considering the pay, though the perks are outstanding. On the other hand, I would not like for Hugh Jones, our publisher, to know this, but I would probably do the job for free. It is that fulfilling.

Sure there are certain drawbacks to the job, late nights when I still have to get up at 6 a.m. to go to my daytime job, deadlines that seem almost impossible to meet at times, and then there is the infernal Internet that seems to wait until the most inopportune times to not function as it was designed to do. Then there are the schools whose rosters that we rely so heavily upon that have wrong spellings or are non-existent. Nothing makes a parent madder than their son's or daughter's name being misspelled. I should know.

Every true sports fan should be extended the opportunity to watch a game through a camera's viewfinder, keep the game stats, chase one or two coaches around for a quote afterwards and then sit down after midnight to sort through several hundred pictures to send just the right one or two and then write a minimum of 500 words on what happened the previous three hours. And by the way, your editor(s) had better like what you wrote or your next assignment could be covering the next frog hopping contest or turtle race at the county fair.

Then there are the few parents who, no matter what you do or how many different ways that you try, simply cannot or will not be appeased.

To them, I simply wish to say, Thank You. Thank you for caring enough about your kids to fight for them. I will continue to strive to get better and to learn from my mistakes (and there have been plenty of those) and I shall continue to endeavor to help kids be proud of their accomplishments.

In conclusion, I would like to thank the crew at the T-G for this opportunity. I appreciate Hugh, David Melson, Danny and even Marsha Howard, who I have driven crazy with my erratic record keeping skills.

I have learned a lot, yet there is still a lot to learn before I can be considered a polished professional. I look forward to the challenge. I now have my own big boy T-G e-mail address listed in each one of my articles.

Maybe some day my name will be mentioned on the sports Web page under 'columnists' with the other writers.

Until then, let's take one goal at a time.

Jimmy Jones is a Times-Gazette sports writer.