South Jersey Local is proud to announce that we have launched our first print edition! To help bring our mission of telling South Jersey’s stories to life, we’ve partnered with a quartet of well-known local digital content creators.
While our focus is primarily on crafting a print newspaper, we acknowledge the power of online platforms when they’re done right, and we believe we’ve picked four of the best around to join our team. In the next couple days we’ll introduce you to each of them individually, with profile stories on each to let you get to know them better.
In this piece we introduce Dave O’Sullivan, the creative force behind South Jersey Glory Days. O’Sullivan’s goal is to provide professional-level coverage of high school sports, and he strives to tell the stories of the local South Jersey kids who are succeeding on and off the field. We couldn’t be more excited about haing him join our team at South Jersey Local!
For Dave “Sully” O’Sullivan it seems sports, and journalism, have almost always been big parts of his life.
Since 2013, the outlet for both has come in the form of South Jersey Glory Days, an online magazine covering high school sports in the region, with an emphasis on telling the stories of students who are excelling in the classroom as well as in athletics.
“I’ve always just tried to make a living and keep sports a part of that,” O’Sullivan said. “And I’ve been lucky to do that.”
O’Sullivan said he moved around a bit while growing up, but that he spent most of his young life in Ocean County, graduating from Lacey High School, where he excelled at baseball.
Designated Writer
After high school, O’Sullivan then attended Monmouth University, where he planned to be an art major and to focus on graphic design.
But he also hoped to keep playing baseball in college, and after he didn’t make the team at Monmouth he transferred to Pfeiffer College (now Pfeiffer University).
He got himself on the baseball team there as a walk-on but his academics took a turn in a different direction out of necessity.
“They didn’t have those kinds of (art) majors at that school and I had to pick something,” O’Sullivan said. “I like writing, and I like sports. So I just said ‘let me go for a journalism degree.’”
Focus on Family
Born into a big Irish family – he’s one of eight kids and has 20 nieces and nephews – O’Sullivan, and his wife Natalie, recently welcomed a son of their own, Murphy, who is now two.
Natalie was a varsity athlete herself, playing on the volleyball team at Eastern High School. They all now live together in Somerdale.
He said his father Mike worked for the Star Ledger and Jersey Journal newspapers in the ‘60s, so journalism may just be in his blood.
A Career Begins, Transforms
Right out of college O’Sullivan entered the newspaper business, spending the next 15 years or so working for different papers, including the Daily Journal in Vineland and The Press of Atlantic City.
But, in 2013 he found himself laid off from his job at The Press. He had gotten some prior notice that the cuts were coming and that his job was likely on the line, so he started planning to start his own venture, even before he was officially let go. The project was initially called Glory Days Magazine.
“I launched just as I was getting laid off,” he said. “I got laid off and the next day I was at a game covering it.”
Setting Himself Apart
O’Sullivan said the response to his coverage was well-received from the start due to his specific take on high school sports.
“I just started going to games and telling people who I was and what I was doing and got a great response from the coaches,” he said. “Right away they loved it because I was writing about kids that typically didn’t get written about.
“I knew I needed some kind of different angle than just trying to compete with The Press or the Courier Post.”
A focus on the student part of student athlete, O’Sullivan said, is what he sought as a way to separate himself from the competition, because it’s what’s important to him personally.
“What I’ve always wanted to do is highlight good kids who are also getting it done in the classroom and in leadership roles on their teams and their schools,” he said. “You know the kid that maybe doesn’t have the greatest stats but has been with the varsity program for four years and has been a great contributor.”
“I felt like those kinds of kids just didn’t get highlighted enough. It was always the quarterback, the running back. It was never the senior offensive lineman who has a 4.0 GPA. That was my mission – to highlight those kinds of kids.”
The Game Plan
Glory Days started out as a print monthly for two years, O’Sullivan said. They then went to twice a month up until 2019, when they decided to forgo print altogether in favor of an all-digital format.
That model has proven successful, he said, as his readership has grown through word-of-mouth and the use of social media.
“We’re putting up numbers that we’ve never seen before,” he said. “We’re averaging more than 20,000 page views a month on our website. We have almost 15,000 social media followers.”
O’Sullivan said that while the majority of his coverage has focused on the southern shore region, his goal now is to expand all over South Jersey.
“What we’ve been doing for the past 12 years has started to catch on, and the next five-year plan is to bring what was so successful in Atlantic County to all the other counties of South Jersey,” he said. “Kind of what we’re focused on now is making a big push into Gloucester and Camden and Burlington counties, while keeping our presence in Atlantic and Cape May counties.”
Inspiration and Life Lessons
O’Sullivan said he’s truly enjoyed the niche he’s carved out for himself and he’s hoping he can continue it for a long time to come.
“We’re going all over the place and just trying to bring our brand of high school sports coverage to as many people as possible,” he said.
When asked if there were any of his sports stories over the years that stood out as particularly inspirational or moving, O’Sullivan was hard pressed to name just one.
“We’ve done a lot of great stories on kids who have had to overcome a lot of things,” he said.
He did, however, recall the story of Stan Adams, Jr., a swimmer from Absegami High School. Adams, who is autistic, became a local sensation back in 2018 due to his can-do spirit and his desire to participate and compete. His story even led his mother to write an inspirational book about her son’s experiences entitled “Don’t Give Up: The Stan Adams Jr. Story.”
“That kid proved what can be possible in high school sports,” O’Sullivan said.
O’Sullivan said he’s hoping to also use his platform as a way to inspire a new generation’s love of sports and journalism by bringing in young reporters, photographers and videographers to help out with South Jersey Glory Days’ coverage.
“We’re trying to build through the schools and hopefully help these kids gain a desire to keep the tradition of sports writing going,” he said. “There’s been a ton of great sports writers in South Jersey throughout the years, and hopefully some of these kids will want to continue that.
A Final Thought
The thing that has made O’Sullivan’s coverage stand out with coaches, with athletes and with their families is the same thing that made us here at South Jersey Local want to have him as a part of our team. It’s his clear understanding of what it is that’s important about sports and about high school in general.
“It takes a lot of commitment to be a varsity athlete that I think a lot of people don’t realize,” he said. “These kids work their tails off for years and years to get to that level and it’s great to celebrate them as hometown heroes for the couple years they’re at that school.
“High School is something that people always look back on. That’s why you go to your 20th reunion and things like that. There’s always that connection with those people you grew up with. There are so many great stories involved with these kids and these coaches and the amount of time they dedicate. It’s just neat to be able to put a spotlight on that.”
Be sure to follow Dave O’Sullivan’s South Glory Days on Facebook to connect even further with his great South Jersey sports coverage!
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