My name is Miles Vance and I am the owner and primary contributor to Miles Vance Sports Journal.
Covering high school sports (and to a lesser degree, youth and community sports) is my life’s work, and I’m ready to continue that work in Lake Oswego and West Linn, my professional homes since 2016.
I began my newspaper career writing news and features in Northeast Portland, but since 1988, I have spent all but three years of my work life focused on high school sports. First, I spent seven years as sports editor at the newspapers in St. Helens and Scappoose, working with some of my former high school coaches from St. Helens during that span.
Next came 20 years as sports editor at two Beaverton-area newspapers, covering all the area Metro League schools and Valley Catholic from 1995-2015. Along the way, I learned to balance coverage between schools, sports and genders, and how to successfully serve multiple schools in a market of 250,000.
During my two decades in Beaverton, I covered state championships — and individual state champions — in every high school sport, wrote about local athletes in college national championships, area stars who advanced to play Major League Baseball and Major League Soccer, covered the Little League World Series, and wrote about local athletes who went on to become Olympic champions.
I’m grateful to say that my efforts did not go unnoticed. In addition to winning every sports writing and sports photography award offered by the Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association many times over, I was given a lifetime achievement award by the Metro League, an award for service by Valley Catholic, was named Oregon District 4 Little League Volunteer of the Year (for my work leading up to and including the 2006 Little League World Series) and was named Wrestling Media Person of the Year.
After that, I spent two years as managing editor for the weekly newspapers in Beaverton, and in Tigard/Tualatin/Sherwood. During that span, I led a staff of seven that won the ONPA’s highest awards (the Beaverton paper won the first-place award for General Excellence, while the Tigard/Tualatin/Sherwood paper placed third), and also led Pamplin Media Group’s move to same-day sports coverage.
From 2016 until the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, I served as sports editor for the newspapers in Lake Oswego and West Linn, and as Prep Sports Editor for Pamplin Media Group, providing PMG’s 10 sports editors with leadership and training, setting coverage standards and coordinating coverage of the year’s biggest state championship events.
At the onset of the pandemic, I served as managing editor of the South County Spotlight newspaper in St. Helens and Scappoose for six months, spent a year coordinating all of PMG’s special sections, working on the Managing Editors Desk and overseeing production of PMG’s five South Zone newspapers.
And finally, with the return of high school sports in the spring of 2020, I covered high school sports for five Pamplin Media Group newspapers, including 11 high schools in eight cities in four leagues and three classifications.
