Montclair’s Emily Kaplan is Olympics-Bound, As Reporter

When we all slink onto couches later this month to watch the Olympic Games, one young Montclair resident will have a much better view – from the press box. Emily Kaplan, a journalism major, will be reporting on the games as a part of a college group working for the United States Olympic Committee.

“It’s not often that an opportunity like this is handed to you. I’m pretty fortunate,” says Kaplan, who recently turned 21, and is a 2009 graduate of Montclair High School. “I keep thinking ‘I’ll be there!’ whenever I see a promo on TV for the Games.”

At home now between her junior and senior years at Penn State University, Kaplan is cramming in preparation for her three weeks in London, reading thousands of Google alerts and anxiously awaiting her specific assignments. Since major competitions and star athletes will be covered by regular USOC editorial staffers, the five Penn State students who were selected were advised to request less-glamorous sports.

“We won’t know until we get there, but that’s okay. A handball athlete may have been training since they were six, but this is their chance, every four years, to put their talent on display,” Kaplan reasons.

The former editor of the MHS Mountaineer, Kaplan has also worked as a stringer for the Associated Press. The students were selected for the plum USOC assignment by Malcolm Moran, Knight Chair in Sports Journalism and Society, in the John Curley Center for Sports Journalism at Penn State.

Their daily feature coverage of athletes and events will appear on USOC Pressbox, on the USA Daily USOC newsletter, and also on the blog at the Curley Center website. Kaplan will be earning academic credit for the experience, and like any good journalist, is already thinking of additional writing she could do while on the scene in London.

“I’m a little bit nervous to think I’m covering an event of this magnitude at this age,” she admits, but adds, “I’m hoping when I get there the adrenaline will kick in.”

She’s already uniquely qualified, having accumulated experience writing about college basketball, covering the Pan American Games last fall, and reporting on the Sandusky scandal for PSU’s The Daily Collegian and other venues.

Moran, who will be accompanying the students in the role of chaperone and liaison, noted that Kaplan has “done an outstanding job here (at PSU), and there are many good things to come.”

Some folks won’t be surprised to hear that, perhaps most of all Emily’s father, Dave Kaplan, a former sports editor with the New York Daily News, who is now director of the Yogi Berra Museum and Learning Center.

“I think he’s proud,” Emily says. But he’ll be watching from Montclair. “I’ve had lots of requests from people who want to fit in my suitcase, but I’m bringing a lot of clothes!”

Following her Olympic trip, Kaplan will be interning this fall at the Philadelphia Inquirer and has her sights set on a reporting career. “I’ve always dreamed of being a newspaper reporter, but now I’m leaning more to online – websites and new media organizations. People always need their news; it’s just a matter of where they get it.”