Well hey there! My name is Brendan Gallian, and this is my website! This is the home of some of my stories from my time writing for the Daily Illini, Sox on 35th, the Frontier League, and everywhere else I may have practiced my craft.

In terms of my writing, I thrice intended to join my high school paper (Go OLCHS Spartans!) but only ended up writing two stories — both in the winter of my freshman year. I was just so busy with marching band and theater crew and scholastic bowl (four-time all-conference, not to brag) and baseball (three-time all-conference scorekeeper/pine rider), and the dozens of other things I tried to juggle during high school.

I got my first real taste of sports writing doing IHSA competitive journalism during my junior and senior years of high school. I wrote exactly four stories for that, and they landed me a sectional third-place finish and state bronze medal my junior year, and a sectional championship and state championship my senior year. I still don’t know if I made the right choice majoring in journalism years later, but at the very least, I made a lot of really cool friends — and one alright one, you know who you are — in college.

Naturally, I joined UIUC’s school paper — the Daily Illini — my freshman year, and covered cross country and track and field. It was … not ideal, but I stuck with it and tried my best, which rewarded me with the hockey beat my sophomore year.

Through hockey — and my brief time with Champaign’s local NPR affiliate — I feel I really came into my own as a writer, and parlayed that fall/winter into the baseball beat that spring.

Also that spring, I was named Sports Editor of the DI and joined Sox on 35th as a Minor League contributor. It was a fun time.

With my newfound responsibility as Sports Editor, I looked long and hard at our very talented roster of writers and assigned the coveted football beat to our best writer: me (sarcasm aside, I did seriously consider sticking with hockey because I really enjoyed working with the team, but I’m glad I challenged myself with something unfamiliar).

Football flipped some kind of switch in me. I’d always thought of sports as more than just some game (thanks in large part to my creative muse: Jon Bois), and the destructive dance that is football naturally lends itself to a different kind of sportswriting. Not that I’m going to revolutionize a centuries-old trade, but it was nice to write a little differently than I had — even if I let the criticism of the masses get to me more than I should have.

I continued to get away from game stories and more towards features as the season came to an end, which I continued for Sox on 35th and the Frontier League. I don’t know what the future holds for me, or the wider profession, but if I could write features about independent league baseball players all my life, I would.

I think that’s pretty much it. Who cares about my personal life? I’m 21-years-old, I love baseball, and I’m an Eagle Scout. But until I heard those voices, I’d never done a crazy thing in my life!

I believe in em dashes (can’t you tell?), Oxford commas, and that quotes can and should be stacked in certain circumstances. I believe that vinyl records are the superior form of experiencing music, and that all music worth listening to is on vinyl anyway. I believe in my beautiful alpine green 1997 Ford Thunderbird, and in referencing baseball movies in ways that kind of disrupt the overall flow of what I was writing.

Again, I welcome you. Won’t you stay a while?