When I was a kid, I was drawn to stories that involved a good treasure hunt.
Favorite movie: National Treasure, the 2004 Nicolas Cage classic. Favorite book series: The 39 Clues. Favorite puzzle: a word search. Dream book project: a hunt for a treasure hidden across Olympic host cities – and naturally, a companion series involving World Cup stadiums. (There’s still time!)
Today, my favorite part of journalism is the same thing: the search. For the story that’s sitting in an unexpected place. The story that’s buried behind the story. The story you can only see when looking through a new lens.
The projects I’ve most enjoyed working on are those that emerge from small details, the gems waiting inside box scores or game notes – the players with demanding side jobs; the book that’s taken over the locker room; the uniform details that fans obsess over.
Indeed, the world of sports is what those treasure hunters would probably term a target-rich environment. But I’d say that soccer is the richest of all of the climes. The stories around soccer – the history, the crowds, the cultures, the songs, the individuality, its worldwide scope – are all so ample and ever-changing. I fell in love with what happened off the field before I understood much of what happened on it. (I know now.)
The subtle, intricate details of the game pair nicely with spending hours rifling through pages of transcriptions to pick out the best quotes. The near-nonstop fixture list demands similarly relentless focus, writing outline upon outline. I’d imagine that scoring a goal feels something like when you finally find the right way to sequence paragraphs in a story, making everything click into place. It’s probably no surprise I was drawn to editing.
The search for stories remains exciting, and it’s a never ending one: for what’s new, for what’s next, for what’s hiding beneath all of it.
Ella joins the Guardian as part of our ongoing expansion covering soccer in the United States ahead of the 2026 World Cup. She arrives alongside two other new hires: soccer correspondents Pablo Iglesias Maurer and Jeff Rueter. She is based in Washington DC.
