Class of 2025

Curt Herron,

Lockport

Contributor

 

Curt Herron attended Lockport Township High School where he began writing about high school sports as a junior in 1980. He graduated from the University Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism from the College of Communications in 1986 and started covering high school sports on a regular basis for The Star Newspapers in Chicago Heights.

He found his next job while working at the Sears store in Joliet. A co-worker convinced him to join Wayne Perry’s Plainfield Enterprise so he could report on her son, a wrestler at Plainfield High School, and he was there from 1995-2000. Curt learned everything about the sport from Wildcats coach Mike Zbacnik, a 2002 IWCOA Hall of Famer, and his assistant, Marc Miller, who’s now a top official. They nominated Curt for the first two of his 10 nominations for the Newsman of the Year Award, which he shared with The News-Gazette’s Fred Kroner in 2000.

Curt returned to The Star Newspapers to report on the south suburbs, and he worked there from 2000-2008 for Al Macey, who allowed him to write a lot about the sport, which included covering many tournaments and running weekly honor rolls while also assisting the Daily Southtown with its wrestling coverage. He was recognized with his second Newsman of the Year Award in 2002.

Thanks to reporting on wrestling, Curt built a friendship that continues with Gary Larsen and Mike Garofola, a 2023 IWCOA Hall of Famer. They came up with the idea to start websites for soccer and wrestling, Chicagoland Soccer and Chicagoland Wrestling. Chicagoland Soccer got a boost from the soccer coaches association who gave it their top honor, Soccer Person of the Year, in 2009 and 2010. Dave Surico, who met them while covering wrestling for the Chicago Tribune, owns Chicagoland Soccer, a unique site sponsored by programs and Curt writes for it.

Curt got the opportunity to write about the sport at the state level for a few years thanks to Mike Bare’s Illinois Matmen, and he received the Newsman of the Year Award in 2013. The next year, he began working for Dick Goss at Joliet’s Herald-News and stayed  there until 2020. He again was allowed to write extensively and received the Newsman of the Year Award again in 2018.

In 2021, Curt reunited with Larsen and Garofola, thanks to the support of 2016 IWCOA Hall of Famer Mick Torres, to write tournament stories for the IWCOA website. An advocate for girls sports throughout his career, Curt is proud that he reported on the first IHSA girls tournaments and he’s covered the most girls events. He’s grateful to write in-depth tournament stories and roundups for all of Illinois and Curt won the Newsman of the Year Award for a fifth time in 2023.

Also in 2021, he was hired by the Joliet Area Historical Museum, where he’s the go-to guy at the first Route 66 welcome center. A big fan of sports history, Curt was co-author of 100 Years of Madness, The IHSA Boys’ Basketball Tournament, in 2006. He thanks his family, the athletes, coaches, athletic directors, officials, parents, fans and reporters he’s known through the years.