Jon Mark Beilue: 'My gut told me this is the place'

WT proved to be springboard for Fox Sports’ Erin Hartigan

*Photo: Before a Texas Rangers pregame show, Erin Hartigan (far right) and Hall of Fame catcher Pudge Rodriguez, sandwich sister Amy Krupski, brother-in-law Mickey Krupski, and fiance William Wilkerson.

Erin Hartigan needlessly apologized for missing a scheduled interview time by 10 minutes. On the last Friday of June, she had been on an afternoon Zoom broadcast hosted by Dr. Emily Kinsky, West Texas A&M University associate professor of media communication.

It was a Friday career focus session. Hartigan discussed her promising career and answered questions from Kinsky and students. As tends to happen when Hartigan gets wound up, it ran a little longer than the allotted hour.

“Anything for WT,” Hartigan said. “I was talking on the WT Zoom how grateful I was that a softball scholarship took me to the panhandle of West Texas. I would not be where I am today without the experience at WT. There is no way.”

Back when there were sports, for those with televisions who follow the Texas Rangers, Big 12 football and basketball, and Texas high school football, it’s hard not to see Hartigan as she expounds on all of those with a comfortable but sometimes rare combination of enthusiasm and knowledge.

Since 2013, Hartigan has been a host/reporter for Fox Sports Southwest, the regional sports network that caters to the state’s sports fan from the high school to the professional. It’s a natural extension for a reporter whose legs barely extended beyond the edge of her seat when dad Tim would take her to Rosenblatt Stadium for the College World Series in her native Omaha, Neb., in the early 1990s.

“It’s been more than I ever imagined,” she said. “I’ve been able to do a little bit of everything in terms of beats. It’s been baptism by fire, but I’ve been used to that before.”

Along with a FSSW lineup that’s familiar to many sports viewers – John Rhadigan, Dana Larson, and Ric Renner – it’s not so much what Hartigan has done in her nearly a decade in Dallas, but what she hasn’t done.

Hartigan has had or continues to have her face and voice on an array of Fox Sports offerings – hosting a statewide high school football roundup every Friday in the fall, and serving as pre- and post-game host for the Rangers and the Houston Texans. In October, Hartigan added pre- and post-game host duties of the NB's New Orleans Pelicans and their generational star Zion Williamson for viewers in the southeastern portion of the network.

Throw in Super Bowl XXLV in Arlington, Major League Baseball winter meetings, Big 12 football media days, Big 12 men’s and women’s basketball tournaments, and that’s pretty nice pickings for a former shortstop on the WT softball team.

“I was kind of thrust into that position at age 25, and I made mistakes along the way,” she said. “It was difficult in the fact I was making mistakes on a regional network as opposed to the local level. But it was an opportunity to learn from and work with the some of the best in the business.

“In many ways, it’s just been a dream,” she said. “Someone asked me on the Zoom what was next for me. Gosh, I don’t know. I’ve got to experience so much in my time I haven’t had time to think about it. I want to lift the next generation. I’m very interested in teaching and bringing along the next Erin Hartigans.”

*Photo: Hartigan, a fixture on the WT softball teams from 2006-2009, was recruited to Canyon by then-coach Kevin Blaskowski.

Softball provided a path to Canyon

This Erin Hartigan, the older of two sisters, grew up with baseball glove in her left hand and Derek Jeter in her heart, starting from the influence of her dad, who was a pitcher for University of Nebraska-Omaha. Susan, her mother who died after a courageous nine-year fight with cancer in 2012, provided the blueprint of her daughter’s life path.

“She always shared with me, ‘No one is you, and that is power,’” Hartigan said. “When you think about it, it’s super powerful. I share this with students that your journey is yours and no one else’s is yours. Your journey is your platform. At the end of the day, what you bring to the table are the gifts that you alone are blessed with.”

Hartigan played just about all the sports a girl could growing up. In high school, softball became her sport, an all-state shortstop at Omaha’s Skutt Catholic in 2004 and 2005.  She was in a summer tournament in Dallas playing for a travel team, the Omaha Finesse, in 2004 when Eastern New Mexico University coach Kevin Blaskowski saw her play.

He wanted to her to visit. Hartigan thanked him, said she would think about it. She later saw where isolated Portales was, and quit thinking about it. But that winter, Blaskowski called her back and said he was now at WT in Canyon, near Amarillo. The school was restarting softball after 24 years, and the offer still stood.

Hartigan had already visited Missouri and Northwest Missouri State. Something told her to take an official visit to Canyon. She went by herself, her parents trusting her to fly alone.

“I made the decision on my own. When I came home, I said that I think I want to move to Texas,” Hartigan said. “My gut told me, ‘This was it. This was the place.’ My parents were like, ‘OK, but you’re going to have to make your life there.’ I’m so glad I listened to my gut because it brought me so many people and experiences that have helped me get to where I am today.”

Hartigan was the human bumper sticker of “I wasn’t born in Texas, but got where as quick as I could.” She was immediately smitten by the university, her fellow students (many, like her, from out-of-state) and an attitude unlike anything she had seen.

“I’m telling you, Southern hospitality, Texas hospitality, is real. It is real,” she said. “Everyone on the campus made me feel so welcome. You don’t find that everywhere.”

For the next four years, from the softball seasons of 2006 to 2009, Hartigan was a mainstay in the middle infield for Lady Buffs, the foundation of a program that would win a national title in 2014.

*Photo: Hartigan, with WT football coach Hunter Hughes, hosted the Lone Star Conference Media Day last year in Arlington.

Doing a lot of everything

But she knew for a while she wanted to be in sports media. Initially, she wanted to write for a magazine, maybe become a columnist, a storyteller. But that changed.

Hartigan didn’t jump into student media offerings at WT as much as she cannonballed off the high dive. As a freshman, she found herself holding a camera, producing, editing, and reporting at KWTS. She would eventually produce and host her own radio show, and report for News One.

That led to play-by-play for Butch Laufer’s soccer teams, basketball and the volleyball team. In the fall, before graduating in 2009, she did work for Buff football for the new WTTV. She not only learned the craft, but also discipline and time management.

While her friends would go to class and take notes and often call it a day, Hartigan returned from softball practice around 6 p.m., would shower, grab a bite, and then host a radio shift or head to the edit bay to finish a feature.

“I was learning so much, more than I think I would have at another school,” Hartigan said. “When I interviewed for various positions, they don’t care where you went to school. They want to know what you can do for them. WT allowed me to become a one-man band and do it all.”

Her time at WT coincided with some of the years her mother was fighting neuroendocrine tumors. Softball and her journalism career were a way of long-distance coping.

“I still live with regret over lost time with her,” Hartigan said. “In an attempt to heal, I’ve tried to live as she did  — a zest and joy for life, a contagious laugh and a huge heart.”

Between the jack-of-all-trades education at WT and a 2007 internship producing video for Omaha.com, the website of her hometown newspaper, the Omaha World-Herald, Hartigan was prepared for the job market.

That led to a job as host, producer, sales and editor with Athletix Nation, Inc., in Kansas City, which led to a reporting job with Fox Sports/Scout.com covering college football recruiting, which led to meeting fiancée William Wilkerson, who was competing for the same scoops with another entity, which eventually led to where she is now – a seven-year veteran of a vibrant regional sports network who’s waiting for sports to restart.

Journalism is unpredictable in its timing and the news it brings. Her experience at Fox and WT could not prepare her for a day in January when she and Cedric Ceballos, a former teammate of Kobe Bryant, went on the air an hour after it was announced the NBA legend was killed. She had to balance poise with compassion.

"I just tried to be human," she said.

Texas is in this Nebraskan’s DNA, and it started when a gut feeling was rewarded 15 years ago by going 650 unfamiliar miles to play a little softball and study a little journalism.

“West Texas is kind of a world of its own,” Hartigan said, “and I’m proud to have been a part of that. I would not trade those four years at WT for anything. WT will always have a piece of my heart.”

Do you know of a student, faculty member, project, an alumnus or any other story idea for “WT: The Heart and Soul of the Texas Panhandle?” If so, email Jon Mark Beilue at jbeilue@wtamu.edu.