By Jeff Kenney Staff Writer
CULVER — Readers of ESPN.com and viewers of the cable sports network’s programs may just recognize the name Mark Schlabach.
If not, a number of Schlabach’s friends, former neighbors, and teachers in Culver undoubtedly will. That’s because Schlabach, a national sports columnist for ESPN’s Web site who also writes for its magazine and appears on television some three times per week during football, baseball, and basketball season, grew up here, adding to the list of many Culverites who have gone on to one degree or another of fame and renown.

Schlabach attended school in Culver from kindergarten through sixth grade, the grandson of Albert Schlabach, who worked at the IGA and Park N’ Shop groceries “for years and years,” he says.
“My fondest memory of him was when he was working and (longtime New York Yankees owner and Culver Academies grad) George Steinbrenner came in. He told George we were big baseball fans and he gave us autographed baseball hats.”
Mark Schlabach’s grandmother on his mother’s side was local, too, hailing from the Leiters Ford area.  
After his parents were married, he says, he and twin brother Shawn and younger sister Christy lived at a few different houses in Culver, the last and longest on Slate Street.
“It was the perfect place to grow up,” he says. “I have very fond memories of Culver.”
Schlabach pointed out he “blames” his father, a huge Notre Dame football and Cubs baseball fan, for instilling in him a love of sports. His Culver childhood – which included countless backyard baseball and football games as well as involvement in the Little League here – added to the mix.
“We were always playing wiffle ball, basketball, tackle football,” recalls Schlabach. “It was great because I had a twin brother. I played sports in high school, but I wasn’t a great athlete.”
The first in a long line of newspaper jobs for the journalist began with delivering the South Bend newspaper “on those hills near the root beer stand. The first thing I’d do is pick up the paper and see if Notre Dame won or lost. I always read a lot…the ladies at Hook’s (Drugs, now CVS Pharmacy) would sell me baseball cards for five cents a pack at the end of the season!”
When McGill’s factory in Culver – where both Schlabach parents were employed – closed down, Mark’s family moved to Atlanta. After graduating high school in Georgia, he attended the University of Georgia with plans to attend law school. But, he says, he “joined a fraternity and had too much fun!”
It was there Schlabach joined the staff of the student newspaper, The Red and Black, which had a daily circulation of 20,000 readers. He was sports editor for the paper for several seasons before the Atlanta Journal-Constitution hired him to cover high school games and later the University of Georgia sports beat.
A dream came true for Schlabach eight years later when he took a job at the Washington Post. “I’d seen ‘All the President’s Men’ about four dozen times,” he says, adding the paper put a premium on good journalism and gave its writers the time and resources to produce it. There, his concentration was on investigative journalism in the area of sports, and he was able to uncover unethical activities in various settings. “It was the best place I ever worked,” he muses.
A desire on the part of Schlabach’s wife to return to her native South took the couple out of Virginia and back to Georgia, where he interviewed with ESPN for a full-time job in 2005.
Initially Schlabach had to turn the company down when they wanted him to move to Connecticut, but ESPN called him “out of the blue,” saying they had a job open writing for their Web site and doing some television work.
With no TV experience under his belt, Schlabach says it was “quite a shock” to find himself sitting in a chair with a camera on him and someone talking to him from New York City.
“I don’t know if I’ll ever get comfortable with it,” he notes. “I had no training or practice. They just throw you in the chair and go! It’s mostly live, about 99 percent. I do a TV show in Atlanta on Comcast Sports 2 (but) it’s taped. It’s a lot more relaxed.”
In the South, Mark Schlabach is something of a household name.
“College football’s a religion in the South,” he explains. “In (Washington) D.C., not a lot of people cared about it. It’s more of a pro sports town.
“I do get recognized down here (in the south); the name more than anything else. The neatest thing is getting emails from other people named Schlabach. Ninety percent are from Amish and Mennonite background . . . it’s a pretty popular name in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and parts of Indiana.”
Schlabach lives outside the city limits of Madison, Ga., about 60 miles east of Atlanta in a “little town just like Culver, with a lake 10 miles from town.”
Places like Culver, he says, are hard to find nowadays.
“It may sound corny, but that’s what we looked for when we moved down here. There’s a lot to be said for the small town atmosphere.
“I’ve been back over the years and Culver hasn’t changed much,” he adds. “You’ve still got the root beer stand, the beach lodge, the Indian trails, and the military academy.”
And in Georgia, as in places across the U.S., Culver is recognized.
“At one point,” recalls Schlabach, “I had a CMA hooded sweatshirt on, and people would go by and say, ‘Hey! Culver!’”
Giving voice to a flood of memories — from favorite Culver Elementary School teachers to “walking across Lake Maxinkuckee when it was frozen, with the ice cracking beneath our feet” — Schlabach clearly holds Culver dear despite the years gone by.
“I couldn’t have asked for a better childhood than growing up there.”
This is another in a series of occasional articles based on our small town Marshall County youth making big careers.
If you want to nominate someone for this series, contact Managing Editor Maggie Nixon at 800-933-0356 or email: mnixon@ thepilotnews. com.