Southern California has long been one of the most prominent sports hubs in the world. The NFL, for example, became the first coast-to-coast professional sports industry thanks to the Rams and the city of Los Angeles in 1946.
Even after the Rams relocated to St. Louis, Los Angeles and the greater Southern California region remained home to a diverse and booming professional sports market. Today, there are well over 10 professional clubs in LA and San Diego that help fuel the industry. LA is also world-renowned on the sports stage, having hosted two Summer Olympic Games with a third on the horizon in 2028.
Despite a thriving professional sports scene, the heart of Southern California sports lies in the local, unembellished student stories.
At the collegiate level, for example, audiences witness not only the honing of athletic skills, sometimes as a prelude to a professional future, but also the unfolding of a player’s fuller story, which is often much more complex than what appears on the field.
However, it is at the high school level where these stories are especially intricate. And when it comes to these localized sports endeavors, no one is more dedicated than sports columnist Eric Sondheimer.
Sondheimer has covered high school sports for the LA Times since 1997, and has done so in Southern California for over four decades. People often enjoy discussing legacy when it comes to sports, and Sondheimer has been crucial in building a legacy for high school sports coverage in Southern California.
I was fortunate to have the chance to briefly speak with Sondheimer about his time covering high school sports and what that has meant to him.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
TSL: I would love to know how you got into covering sports in general, but more specifically, high school sports.
Sondheimer: Well, I started in high school. The year I graduated, I became a stringer for the Daily News, reporting scores and doing short stories. I’ve always done high school [sports coverage], but I started out doing other things, you know, NBA championships, NFL.
The key I believed in was being versatile, but I’ve always stuck with high school because there are so many stories to tell; it’s local, so it’s essential to most newspapers. It helps you stay local amidst national issues. Just some great stories to tell of people overcoming adversity, or people who are really good, and you’ll hear later on in their careers when they’re on TV. The key for me is that I think about what the reader wants to read.
TSL: Do you think that social media and, at the same time, NIL deals and sponsorships, have changed your approach to talking with athletes and covering stories?
Sondheimer: [Those things] haven’t changed my approach. I’m sticking with my approach, but now I’m shocked when an agent calls me up and recommends a story because they’re doing NIL with a particular person.
It kind of makes me concerned that … the kids’ and parents’ interests are not the same as everybody else’s. And during the high school experience, they’re already focused on the next level.
So, I don’t really like those stories. I’m not interested in stars. I go and see a player, if I think they’re good based on my observation and my experience, that is what I would rate over somebody who gets stars. The star system is so misleading and inaccurate.
But, it’s changing things about loyalty. Fans don’t know who to root for because these kids are only spending one year at a school. It’s still early, things will change again, but I’m not changing the way I cover high school sports at all.
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Sondheimer’s answers about the evolution of high school sports coverage in a changing sponsorship environment really stuck with me.
There was also something deeply heartening in listening to Sondheimer speak about high school sports in Southern California and the lasting impact they have on so many young, aspiring athletes. This especially rang true for me, as I am both a sports journalist and a varsity cross-country runner.
Throughout my time as a high school athlete, much of what Sondheimer described was very present. There was always a part of sports for me that was centered around developing for the next level and preparing for collegiate athletics. And there still is a large part of me that approaches sports in college with this same mindset.
I often have to remind myself that running for Pomona-Pitzer is likely the last phase in my competitive athletic career. In the past, that was a hard notion to grapple with. And yet, thanks in large part to the journalistic projects that I have undertaken here in Claremont, I’ve become much more aware of the fact that there is so much more to sports, and to my sports story, than its mere competitive nature.
Sondheimer created a series of articles over a year ago, called PREP Talk, which is dedicated to covering something upbeat and encouraging within the Southern California high school sports scene. Many of these stories do not deal with the accomplishments of a specific player or team, but rather seek to cover the more unique and uplifting actions of those in the high school sports community. In an article Sondheimer wrote last year, he shared why he thought this was such an important initiative.
“It’s something I’ve tried to do for 48 years, and now it’s going to be a daily notebook,” Sondheimer wrote. “Sometimes it will be short. Sometimes it will be long. It will be like being on social media but without the second-guessing and accusations of having an agenda. The only agenda will be focusing on the positives of high school sports.”
Whether it’s an athlete trying out a new sport, a student performing the national anthem at a game or a trainer saving a coach in cardiac arrest, Sondheimer’s PREP Talk articles are inserting some necessary enthusiasm back into a world where negativity has recently been a dominant force.
After three years of participating on a varsity sports team at Pomona, I have learned that our culture here in Claremont is fortunate in many ways, as it resembles the parts of high school sports that Sondheimer finds so valuable. We have many stories to tell, due to both the diversity of talent and the boundless interests present at the 5Cs.
It is also true that most of those stories have a great deal to do with resilience, because facing and overcoming adversity is an inextricable part of both college life and sports.
There are many things to learn from Sondheimer’s decades of dedication to high school sports. Perhaps none are more valuable than honoring the local stories, which are now threatened by outside pressures on student athletes.
As Sondheimer wrote earlier this year, “I’ve always treated high school sports as different than college or pros. These are teenagers, with criticism of coaches and athletes mostly off limits. But times are changing. Players are getting paid. Coaches are engaging in ethical lapses … I will continue to respect the tradition of high school sports being about having fun but insist on rules being followed.”
As an athlete and a journalist, I have been fortunate enough to share the stories of other 5C students, and have seen the combination of talent and enjoyment in Claremont collegiate sports.
We as students should be more appreciative of the fact that we do get to see all of those dimensions of sports. Because outside of high school sports, as Sondheimer has shown, this coexistence can be hard to find.
Sondheimer’s story inspires me to focus more on the unsung, sanguine moments of Claremont sports, rather than the headline stories or popularly discussed narratives that exist within the 5C sports realm — I don’t particularly enjoy those stories.
Sebastian Groom PO ’26 loves to watch and talk about sports. Unfortunately, he struggles playing any sport that involves an additional object or lateral movement. For that reason, he has stuck to running in circles. Speaking of circles, he once dreamt of getting a tattoo of the Olympic rings … looks like that one may have to wait.
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