By Ben McLoughlin

The first issue of The Match. Photo courtesy of the Julia Williams Study and Archives Center.

“The Match! That is the name of our new school paper” wrote Collegiate students Margie Gaffney and Betty Shewmake in March 1946. “It all started in Grammar class one day, when Ms. Duncan was running off transitive verbs and we had our minds on other things. All of a sudden, one member of our class came out with a dreamy, ‘You know, I think we ought to have a school paper.’” 

From humble typed and stapled beginnings, Collegiate’s featured student paper has been a constant in our community. The Match has gone through major changes over its 77-year runtime, and revisiting past issues gives a fresh, honest look at the thoughts and feelings of Collegiate students throughout our school’s history. The Match strives to be “the voice of the students,” as Upper School English teacher and current Match advisor Vlastik Svab tells his Writing for Publication English class at the start of the semester, and that has been evident since the first issue.

While the first Match was published in 1946, Collegiate had circulated several publications prior. Ben Lamb, Upper School librarian and Collegiate’s archivist, manages the Julia Williams Study and Archives Center in the Saunders Family Library. Behind the librarians’ desk lies the Collegiate archives, home to every old copy of the Torch (our yearbook), the Spark (our alumni magazine), a complete history of the school, and most of Collegiate’s student-produced newspapers. 

Get it? Photo courtesy of the Julia Williams Study and Archives Center.

On a visit to the Archives, Lamb and I pulled out three neatly organized boxes of old papers and magazines, sorted by decade. The first publication was called The Collegiate Chronicle, running from 1917-1923. Less of a student paper, the Chronicle was a faculty-produced yearly publication. Lamb explained that in lieu of a yearbook, the four-page Chronicle was distributed on the last day of school and had the names of every student, 1st-12th Grade. The first student-produced publication came in 1920. The Prism was published 103 years ago, primarily containing student poems, along with Collegiate news and unfunny jokes that have not stood the test of time.

Lamb said that the Great Depression and World War II may have prevented Collegiate from running a regular paper after that, but a few were created: A paper ran from 1938-41 called The Candle, containing athletic updates and political cartoons, and The Chatterbox was published March 1945, urging readers to buy war bonds and stamps. It wasn’t until 1946 that our school had a consistent, quality, student-run newspaper. 

Sports update. Photo courtesy of the Julia Williams Study and Archives Center.

The first issue of The Match is, in a word, cute. The yellowed, stapled, typewritten pages containing jokes, poems, sports updates, and more were sold to students; the price is unknown.

The writing is simple, but genuine, earnest, and endearing. “Basket Ball [sic] season has opened,” writes Mary Jane Bowers, “and Collegiate is right in there playing. The spirit has been really grand and the score–well–we’re still trying.” Poems and stories were provided by girls at all levels of school.

My favorite part of Vol. 1, No. 1 is easily the almost two full pages dedicated to school gossip. “Betty… had a big date last Saturday with one of her old flames. She got home at 12:30 P.M. Could it be that the car broke down, or what?” writes one girl. “Who’s Margie been writing lately? We know it’s not a male-Well?” Poor Margie! “I hear Gracie is having a hard time keeping her Bobbys straight” one adds. This is the type of news I want to hear about. The girls of ‘46 took “the voice of the students”  to the next level. Bravo. 

2nd grade Isabel Ware’s poem from Issue 1. Photo courtesy of the Julia Williams Study and Archives Center.

Issue 2, released in the fall of 1946, looked more like a traditional paper; it was bound and professionally typed. The paper sold ads to local businesses for funding, most near Collegiate’s previous Monument Avenue campus. Through the 1940s and 50s, the quality noticeably fluctuated from issue to issue. Consistency came in 1954, and from then on, The Match looked quite impressive, winning national awards for its style and content, according to Lamb. Photographs were also first introduced in 1954, and it looked and read more like a real newspaper that could be found in any city. To keep in line with award guidelines, The Match was distributed six to eight times a year, mostly consisting of polished articles detailing happenings around Collegiate. Out were the wonderful gossip columns of the ‘40s. Some jokes remained, but the paper was mostly serious. 

A major change came in 1974: The Match transitioned from a true newspaper to a magazine. Originally on paper, by 1980 the finish was glossy and sturdy. It was in 1981 when beloved Collegiate Middle School teacher and girls varsity basketball coach Rives Fleming (‘83) began writing for The Match as a Sophomore. 

Rives Fleming’s Senior portrait. Photo courtesy of the Julia Williams Study and Archives Center.

In Fleming’s classroom in the Middle School today, pictures from all of his classes since the 90s cover part of one of the walls, and sports memorabilia fills the rest of the room. Fleming told me that when he was a student in the Upper School, students were required to take a journalism class before joining the Match staff. He credited his 7th Grade English teacher, retired coach and Middle School teacher Weldon Bradshaw, who, forty years on, still writes for local news covering sports, as an influence for joining The Match: “I grew up reading the newspaper. Sports journalism drew me specifically into it.” Fleming recalled that he would accompany Bradshaw to local football and basketball games, observing him interviewing players after the games. Fleming, who started as a feature columnist before becoming an associate editor in his Senior year, said that the paper staff met during activity periods “maybe once or twice a week.” 

From an October 1981 issue of The Match. Photo courtesy of the Julia Williams Study and Archives Center.

Apart from longtime Collegiate teacher and faculty advisor Shirley Patteson, the paper was student-led, primarily by two co-editors and one associate editor. The publication continued to focus on Collegiate news and local happenings that Collegiate students would be interested in. In 1981, Fleming, then a Junior, wrote an article about stars from the soap opera All My Children visiting Regency Square and Thalhimer’s department store. Fleming also recalls The Match being popular with students K-12. “On the Fridays when we put it out, they kinda’ went fast… We’d try to get them out by lunchtime, and we’d put a pile in different corners of the front hall, and people would pick them up,” he added. “We gave them out in the Lower School, too… I remember them going pretty fast.” 

When asked about his favorite memories, Fleming talked about how much he bonded with the staff during his time. It was an extracurricular activity, not for a grade, so the staff members were all similar in their motivation to independently write and produce the paper. “It was just a really tight group. It was almost like an athletic team, but we lasted all year… When you’re constantly in there, and you stay late after school to finish when you’re behind, you become closer with the people. The relationships are important,” Fleming told me, smiling as he remembered his high school days. 

Photo credit: Archana McLoughlin.

My fascination with The Match runs in the family. My mother, Archana Jesudian McLoughlin (‘93), was a proud editor of the paper during her time at Collegiate. Even before I came to Collegiate, I had heard stories from her about staying up to meet hard deadlines, troubles with printing, and the satisfaction of seeing the completed paper. “My first article I wrote for The Match was in 4th Grade,” she told me during an informal interview one night after dinner. In the 80s, the Lower School page of the paper was host to the perspectives of Lower Schoolers. McLoughlin (née Jesudian) came to Collegiate in 2nd Grade and remembered that an Upper School member of the Match staff would come down to the Lower School to tell kids about journalism and help them write pieces to be published. She recalls reading The Match while in Lower School: “It just kind of showed up in the Lower School, but it wasn’t until Upper School that I realized how much work went into it… I wanted to be a part of that. It was a big part of the community.” She described the excitement of seeing the magazine in the Lower School, remembering how exciting it would be to see a picture of herself or a friend.

After taking a journalism class in 10th Grade, McLoughlin became involved with The Match, eventually becoming a co-editor-in-chief her senior year, leading the roughly 12 members of the group. She told us about the hard Saturday deadlines at the time, recalling that the staff would occasionally stay at school until “2, 3 in the morning” on Friday night, supervised by “the most wonderful, kind advisor, Mrs. Patteson,” who advised the paper from 1976-1998. The Match was still funded by ads at that time, and one student’s entire job was to secure funding for the year via local advertisements. McLoughlin described the overall process as “very much a bonding experience,” echoing Fleming’s reflections about growing close to this group of people. As an editor, it fell on McLoughlin to “keep people on task, and keep them motivated,” as well as editing for clarity and length. Lost with the modern-day Match’s online format is the formerly essential task of keeping articles the proper length to fit on the page correctly.

The struggles of printing: “The clock is ticking” was partially obscured in an issue. Photo credit: Archana McLoughlin.

The Match’s 1992 masthead. Photo credit: Archana McLoughlin.

Partnered with her as a co-editor was Justin Pope (‘93), a “serious journalist,” as my mother put it, who went on to write for the Associated Press after his time with The Match. Being an editor was “a huge time commitment,” but ultimately worth it, as it helped students hone writing skills and instilled the importance of hard deadlines, two skills my mother uses to this day as a lawyer.

Formerly an extracurricular activity, The Match is now written by students of English teacher Vlastik Svab’s semester-long Junior/Senior English elective Writing for Publication. Svab inherited the job as faculty advisor for The Match, along with Upper School English teacher Dr. Bart Thornton, when the two were new to Collegiate in 2007. Originally a black and white magazine, like years prior, Svab said that he and Thornton moved away from hard copy in 2009 during the recession to cut down on costs associated with printing. Svab said that “physical print media is dying. The world of journalism is almost all online now anyway, so we’re trying to prepare students for that world.”

While The Match remained a club for some time, Svab decided to switch it to an English elective in 2015, emphasizing that it would remain “student-focused” and show “what students were interested in writing about.” When asked about this switch, Svab said that it “has some pros and cons. I really like letting students write what they want to write about,” he told me, highlighting that The Match is different from other school papers in that it focuses more on the greater world than just looking at Collegiate. Svab strives to keep the articles interesting to students by almost always asking his journalists to ask: “What do your classmates think about this?” A challenge with the class format is that there is “no editorial structure,” like in the past, as new students enter and exit the class every semester. “I don’t have experienced Seniors that can mentor younger students,” Svab said about this phenomenon.

When asked about his favorite memories from leading our newspaper, Svab highlighted the fact that “sometimes, [articles] lead to substantial change” in our school. During the first semester of the Writing for Publication class in 2015, an article written by Georgia Beazley (‘17) about summer homework made its way into faculty meetings. “I think some faculty didn’t even realize how much these students were being asked to do each summer,” Svab said, and he told me that it “contributed to a discussion” about changing policies regarding summer work. Today, summer homework is certainly lighter than what Beazley highlighted in her article. A 2016 article by Tana Mardian (‘17), eloquently questioned our dress code, and was “used in administrative meetings to… address some of these issues.” Match articles resulting in discussions about policy changes at the School is what Svab is “most proud of” when reflecting on his time with the paper.

Even after going through major changes over the years, it’s evident by reading past issues that The Match has always been “the voice of the students.” Reading issues from 1946 to the present gives a unique look at the honest perspectives of Collegiate students throughout history. The legacy of The Match continues to this day. Although there is not the same energy in the school that my mother described on release days, I still greatly enjoy reading every article that my peers write as soon as they come out. I agree with my mother that there is some value to a hard copy, as opposed to an online paper. I think that one paper issue per year would be a interesting change to the current format, while still preserving resources.

Paper or digital, I have been looking forward to writing for The Match since 9th Grade, and I’m glad I finally got to in my Senior year. The freedom of choice in article topics sets Writing for Publication apart from other English classes I have taken at Collegiate, and the format is a refreshing contrast to the countless essays I have written in high school. The Match is an essential part of our community, and hopefully, it will be for another 77 years or more.