Brennen Rupp is the new sportswriter at the Rock County Star Herald, now in his second week of covering local sports.
“It feels good to get back to writing and back to covering high school and local sports,” he said Friday. “It’s been great. Everybody has been very welcoming and I’m looking forward to meeting even more people.”
His duties with the Star Herald will be part-time until pandemic-affected sports schedules return to normal.
So far he’s followed girls’ tennis, girls’ and boys’ cross country, local racing and several other events.
Rupp has a bachelor’s degree in communications and a minor in sociology from Minnesota State University, Mankato, and is a high school graduate of the Russell-Tyler-Ruthton district.
“I grew up in a small community,” he said. “All the schools I covered were smaller communities. I know how important prep sports are to those communities.”
He said it’s good to be closer to family in the area and doing a job that suits him.
“I’ve always been a sports nut,” Rupp said.
“I grew up in Ruthton and our house was right across the street from the basketball court in town. I spent nearly every summer day over at The Gardens, either playing a game with some friends or by myself just practicing.”
Rupp comes to the Star Herald with experience at papers in Colorado, Montana and most recently Marshall.
“A few years after graduating from Minnesota State University, Mankato, I moved out to the Pacific Northwest and eventually landed my first reporting job at the Western News in Libby, Montana,” he said.
“Following that, I landed a job as the sports reporter for the Journal-Advocate in Sterling, Colorado, where I covered five high schools and a junior college.”
After two years there, he joined the Marshall Independent as a sports reporter.
“Ultimately the opportunity to come back to the area where I grew up was too good to pass up,” Rupp said.
“It was a lot of fun to be able to come back and work for a paper that used to cover me when I was playing prep sports. It was odd, yet fun, interviewing my old basketball coach and middle school math teacher. … I got to cover R-T-R going to state in football.”
After a long-distance relationship with his now fiancée, Madison, Rupp said he made the difficult decision to leave Marshall to be with her.
“I was at The Marshall Independent for two years before moving to Sioux Falls to start my life with my fiancée,” he said.
They were planning to be married earlier this year, but have postponed the wedding due to coronavirus distancing.
“She always gives me a hard time that our schedule is based off what sporting event is on TV. … With the football season right around the corner, she knows that on Sundays, if we have something to do, we’d better do it before noon,” Rupp said.
“The combination of my love for sports and passion for writing makes sports reporting a dream job. I’ve had multiple stops along the way to get me to this point and I’m excited to get started here.”
Rupp replaces Star Herald sportswriter John Rittenhouse, who retired after 35 years this spring when school sports shut down due to coronavirus closures.
General Manager Rick Peterson said it was a blow losing Rittenhouse and three decades of experience, but he said new opportunities are on deck.
“I’m excited to have Brennen on board,” Peterson said.
“He brings a solid mix of sports-writing experience along with a familiarity of Twitter and other social media sharing that will give the Star Herald a place at the table of online sports news.”
Rupp can be reached at sportseditor@star-herald.com.