Media of the Year - 2004

DIANE GASPER-O'BRIEN
Hays Daily News

Diane Gasper-O’Brien was nominated by Hays area coaches for her coverage of the sport of high school wrestling for her work at the Hays Daily News. Her efforts to provide media coverage of wrestlers for their fans and supporters have earned her recognition as a “Media of the Year” award by the Kansas Wrestling Coaches Association.

She has worked at the Hays Daily News for 27 years, starting as a part-time sportswriter in 1977, while attending college at Fort Hays State University. She graduated from FHSU in 1980 and became sports editor in 1989. She has also covered news, schools, community events, and FHSU news in her work for the Daily News. She now serves as the education reporter for Hays and Ellis County.

While she enjoys covering news, she says her first love is sports with one of her favorite sports to cover being wrestling. She grew up in a small town and had never even seen wrestling, but was drawn to the sport as she began to cover it.

“Part of the pull to wrestling is that some look at it as a ‘minor’ sport, and my passion while working in the sports world was to give athletes in those so-called ‘minor’ sports their just due,” she explained.

Last year she was able to cover wrestling again and was excited for the opportunity.

“I was surprised to see how many of the names looked familiar even after several years, and I had a lot of fun meeting up with coaches I hadn’t seen in years,” she said. “I also came to understand the importance of ‘institutional knowledge’ as I was able to call on some of my past experiences to write some stories that other younger reporters could not have known about.”

“I have a lot of respect for wrestlers and wrestling coaches and am really honored to get this award in my short tenure back in wrestling coverage,” she said.