Welcome to Mid Suburban Legends and Beyond

Welcome to Mid Suburban Legends and Beyond, a newsletter about High School Sports Stories from the Past and Present. I’m Marty Maciaszek and I have been writing about sports and high school sports for more than 40 years. I have started a newsletter/blog that will tell a lot of different stories from the high school scene.

I started writing for the Elmhurst Press in high school on a typewriter so this certainly wasn’t something I was thinking about back then. I’ve also worked at the Peoria Observer, Peoria Journal Star, Chicago Tribune, Wheaton Daily Journal, Daily Herald and the Northwest Herald. I’m not leaving my day job, which I have enjoyed since 2012 with the National Sporting Goods Association, but it is still a blast to write about high school sports.

The bulk of my sportswriting career was with the Daily Herald - and I worked there full-time from 1995 until the fall of 2012. I also did a significant amount of freelance work from 1992-95 and 2012-18. Covering the 12-team Mid-Suburban League was a great experience because of how close the schools are to each other and the stability at a time where you definitely need your pencils and scorecards to keep up with the constant change in other conferences. I also felt a lot of responsibility to live up to the great coverage of writers such as Bob Frisk and Keith Reinhard as the MSL and Herald basically grew up together. I also had the good fortune to regularly cover Maine West, St. Viator, Leyden and Christian Liberty.

Making sure some of the history and memories continue to be chronicled for the MSL and other schools is important and that’s part of what I’ll be trying to do. I’m sure it will evolve as we go but I have a lot of different ideas. I’m also interested in compelling current stories that may not have a place in newspapers because of the unfortunate cutbacks in staff resources and space. And it doesn’t have to be from the area I spent most of my time covering. I’m also up for all sports - boys and girls - as I covered everything from badminton to wrestling.

Eventually I will have a payment model set up for some of the content but initially I want you to check it out and hopefully you enjoy it enough to keep coming back. Please drop me a note with your input or questions at marty.maciaszek@gmail.com. You can also find me on Twitter at @martymaciaszek, frequently engaging in sports silliness and ranting about the White Sox (there was a lot of that in 2022).

I look forward to your feedback and input and being part of Mid Suburban Legends and Beyond!

Best regards

Marty