When Hallie Grossman was at Penn State, she never saw sports in her career path. She pursued a degree in political science as a member of the Schreyer Honors College.

Despite being a political science major, Grossman always kept journalism in the back of her mind through her experience with the Daily Collegian. She decided to join the paper during her sophomore year as a reporter. She did different types of beat reporting, like national and world, but not anything sports-related. That all changed during her senior year.

In 2006, the Pittsburgh Steelers made it to the Super Bowl for the first time with quarterback Ben Roethlisberger. Grossman was tasked with capturing the crowd reaction around the State College community on the Steelers making the big game. The experience was not only the most fun for her at Penn State, but it also gave her the belief that she has potential in the industry of sports journalism.

“It was sort of like my first glimpse [that] this is a job that I can do, so that was really eye-opening in terms of being the proudest,” Grossman said. “I was thrilled to marry the best of what I loved about Penn State with the best of what I really valued in academics. Looking back, I loved my college experience because it was just the best of all worlds.”

After Grossman graduated in 2007, she moved to New York. She took a job with a small public relations agency, but began to slowly realize that she wanted to pursue a different career.

Even though Grossman realized that public relations wasn’t for her, she credited her first job for helping her build foundational skills that would eventually be very valuable to her in her current role. She said that it helped give her the confidence to speak to people whom she didn’t know or didn’t know her whenever she pursued a story.

After Grossman left the job, she applied for a position at ESPN The Magazine for its research department, where she would be fact-checking. Despite knowing that the role was for only two months, she didn’t hesitate to apply and ended up getting it.

Just as her time came to an end, ESPN The Magazine relocated from Manhattan to Bristol, Connecticut. A part-time position in the research department opened up, and she was offered the job. The position became full-time, and in June 2011, she moved to Bristol.

Grossman was responsible for ensuring the accuracy and integrity of the magazine’s stories. One of her biggest accomplishments was winning ESPN’s Standing O Award for overseeing a story about an abusive culture fostered by one women’s soccer team owner. Along with that, she became a college football editor.

“It’s probably the biggest factor that helped me get to where I am, just by virtue of being exposed to the writers and seeing how the magazine worked,” Grossman said. “Seeing how the magazine worked and understanding what the magazine was looking for in terms of story and writing style. It was a really good training ground, and that’s where I launched into my current role.”

Grossman transitioned into a features writer and reporter role for the magazine in 2016 before moving to ESPN.com in the same role three years later. She has the responsibility of pitching story ideas to her editor and pursuing features on athletes or trends. On other occasions, it’s her editor who offers her to pursue feature stories on certain topics, and even if it’s outside her comfort zone, she always embraces the challenge of taking on a different story assignment.

Whenever Grossman gets a story assigned, she has a day-to-day process to cultivate success. She conducts extensive research on the story’s main character and then compiles a list of sources to interview. She said that she always wants to create the most robust list of people to talk to so she can get a full picture of who she’s writing about.

In the process, Grossman has interviewed some of the biggest stars in sports. She goes through a long process that can sometimes take months. For example, she said that she pitched a story idea on Saquon Barkley in May, and the article didn’t get published till September. She was met with an uphill climb to make the story work, but once again, she persevered through the challenge.

“[The Eagles] told me right away that everybody is asking for Saquon, it’s going to be hard to get him in any real capacity,” Grossman said. “Every single outlet and writer is trying to write a Saquon story, but we forged ahead. So, my summer was spent knowing that I probably wouldn’t get close to Saquon but trying to get close to those around him.”

To do that, Grossman went to as many events as possible, from Eagles mini-camp to a Devonta Smith charity softball game in Allentown, Pennsylvania. She talked to Eagles players like Jalen Hurts, Lane Johnson, Jordan Mailata, and more about the impact that Barkley has on the team and in the locker room. However, she was able to get Barkley to talk with her, even though it was for only three minutes, but it was enough for her to write her story.

Other than the Barkley story, Grossman has written a lot of feature stories on many famous athletes like Jared Goff, Trevor Lawrence, Nebraska women’s volleyball head coach Dani Busboom Kelly, and, most recently, Fernando Mendoza. Along with that, she has written stories on sports that don’t get a lot of media attention, like the dynasty of Oklahoma softball and Katie Taylor, who competes in women’s boxing. She has also made on-air appearances on ESPN to talk about her stories and covered sporting events like Super Bowl LIV.

Grossman’s 15-year tenure at ESPN has most recently been highlighted by the Newswomen’s Club of New York’s Front Page Award for specialized reporting and the Folio: Eddie Award for a single article. As she looked back on all her accomplishments, she said that her first feature story, which was on Carson Wentz, was her biggest accomplishment.

“I had to do it in this very truncated period of time, and that one happened in the course of several days, which for the magazine at that time was very fast, and it came together really well,” Grossman said. “It was reassuring to me that I knew that I had editors in my corner who were like, ‘Hallie can do this.’ It was just valuable for me to know that people believed in me and then to have it come together.”

Grossman said that she doesn’t envision anything but ESPN in her future. She loves everything she does in her job, being pushed to try to think about cool things to write about, and feels grateful to be surrounded by a working environment with supportive people. She plans to continue accomplishing the same goals she’s always had since she became a writer in the next step of her sports journalism career.

As Grossman looked back on her journey from Penn State to ESPN, she gave advice to students who are looking to work in a highly competitive sports industry.

“Be open to the idea that a lot of different avenues can get you to where you want to go. I didn’t set out to be a fact checker, but it was really valuable, and it led me to my dream job,” Grossman said. “What I’ve learned is to be open, and that’s true of how I approach stories, too. Have an open mind about where you start and use that to get where you want to finish.”