IU Indianapolis graduate students Chris Schumerth and Cort Street were in New Orleans to cover the 2025 Sugar Bowl between Notre Dame and the University of Georgia for the IU Indianapolis Sports Capital Journalism Program on January 1.
In the early morning hours on the scheduled day of the game, a man drove a pickup truck into a crowd on Bourbon Street, killing 14. The driver had an ISIS flag on his truck, police reported.
They found out about the attack when Schumerth's phone rang at 6:30 a.m. in his hotel room. He declined the first call from his friend Neal Van Vynckt.
He called again. This time he answered.
“If he’s calling twice at 6:30 in the morning, it must be important,” Schumerth wrote in an article he published for the program about this experience.
“Are you okay?” Schumerth’s friend asked.
“I had no idea what he was talking about,” Schumerth said, “So he told me.”
An act of terror happened just a five-minute walk away from their hotel.
“It was shocking to be so close to something that was affecting the whole country,” Street said.
They went to New Orleans to cover a football game. They then wrote about a terrorist attack.
Schumerth, a part-time graduate student in the IU-Indy sports journalism program who has an undergraduate degree in political science, saw an opportunity to write about something that went beyond sport.
“To be able to pivot and try to say something about this huge thing that happened, it was good for me to have that practice,” Schumerth said.
Schumerth then tied the terrorist attack back to the Sugar Bowl in the article he wrote.
“The 91st Sugar Bowl — no matter what happens in the game — will become tied to this horror forever,” Schumerth wrote. “While political leaders and law enforcement officials continue the investigation and work to define security concerns and precautions, it feels appropriate for the rest of us to pause, look beyond the casualty figures, and acknowledge the existential grief.”
“The problem with trying to say something after an event like this one is the risk of trivializing something so consequential, of resorting to triteness in the absence of answers,” Schumerth said.
Street detailed what was required of them to be able to immediately write about the attack that had just occurred. Street explained that they had to spend time verifying early reports of the details of the attack to ensure they had accurate information before they published anything on the IUI Sports Capital website.
“It was a lot of research… We had the news all day, listening to the press releases, getting quotes from what could actually be in our articles,” Street said. “Sometimes it was a matter of waiting, making sure we had all that information exactly right, so that we're not putting out anything that could be confusing.”
The game was eventually played the following day and both Schumerth and Street both covered the game as credentialed media members, giving them access to the press box during the game and the pre-game and post-game conferences. Cort Street is also in the program in his second semester of the one-year program and found the experience in the program to help him feel more confident in covering sports writing.
“I didn't know if I really had what it took to go up to the players to interview them… Now I feel so much more confident in my abilities to do that going forward,” Street said.
Schumerth also continues to write for the Sports Capital Journalism program as he studies part-time in the program while also being an academic advisor for the IU Indianapolis Kelley School of Business. He also found the access as a credential media member to be valuable for his experience in sports journalism.
“It was surreal. You got both teams in the room, you can talk to anyone you want, like the offensive coordinator by yourself,” Schumerth said. “Yes, I’m nervous too but I belong here, and I am good enough to do this work and I’m learning while I’m doing it.”
Kondwani Mzumara is a Junior studying Sports Journalism. Hobbies include video games, listening to music and watching athletic events.
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