Ethan Hanson: Obsession and long road back home to the Valley
WOODLAND HILLS - I was a loud, obsessive sports fan growing up, and it could get me in trouble with my parents, who preferred quiet mornings reading the newspaper while sipping their coffee.
When the sun came up over my two-story home on Fenwood Ave., I would hear the slow pull-up of a sedan and then the gentle thud of a newspaper thrown onto my family’s porch.
That was the signal for an 11-year-old boy with an almost endless supply of energy and enthusiasm for sports. I’d rabbit-step my way down two flights of stairs to get the latest copy of the sports section from the Los Angeles Daily News before my stepfather.
I read the sports section every day. I loved the smell of freshly printed ink. I felt like I was opening a gift under a Christmas tree every morning.
My stepfather didn’t always appreciate that his sports-crazed son had stolen the sports section from his grasp. “EEEEETHAN!” he’d bellow.
I read the sports section cover to cover. I absorbed sports books and tuned into SportsCenter religiously.
I didn’t know I was on my way to becoming the LA Daily News’ sports reporter, but I still have that boundless energy and enthusiasm.
It’s been a winding path to make it here, with a healthy recipe of luck, opportunity seized, occasional failure and adventures that took me from the Pacific Ocean to the sacred ground of Indiana high school basketball gyms and back.
The road home wasn’t painted in the royalty of Laker purple and gold or Dodger blue. I received a ‘D’ during the first journalism class I ever took at Pierce College and it took a 5-foot-3 professor who sternly told me that I’d better learn to write.
I freelanced for the Daily News in college and got my foot in the door. I took my first full-time job in Redding in 2019, and I’ve been working my way back ever since.
Adapting to Midwestern life
The last three years were spent in Lafayette, Indiana, where every high school gymnasium and baseball and football field feels like a relic. Case Arena, where Blue Chips was filmed? I was there covering both the joy and heartbreak of the IHSAA volleyball and basketball playoffs this spring – the spirit of Hoosierdom.
I wrote about French Lick, the home of Larry Bird and other iconic sports figures, and I was blessed by the kindness of Midwesterners who took in this quirky and energetic Californian and made me part of the culture’s sports fabric.
My goal in Indiana was to make the voices of schools both big and small feel like they were connected to the newspaper. The Lafayette area readers recognized my dedication to the community and embraced me. The local burger joint, Brown’s Lindy Freeze, named a burger after me at one point.
What’s coming in the future?
Indiana taught me the most important lesson of all, that the smallest voices matter. We’ll write about LA Daily News powerhouses like Sierra Canyon, Harvard-Westlake, Notre Dame and Oaks Christian and the top recruits and future Olympians in this area.
But sprinkled in, I’m looking for organic storylines of people who have overcome adversity and of communities that may go unnoticed without a curious eye.
I spent two years writing about a baseball league in Frankfort, Indiana, where Latin-American communities compete for bragging rights while also being a center for commerce and connection for Spanish-speaking people.
I plan to flip over rocks, and to dig, and I’ll always be curious. Now I’m back in the San Fernando Valley, where the journey started, a full circle where the reader has become the writer.
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This story was originally published June 1, 2026 at 1:40 PM.