2013 C-S High School graduate Mitchell Vosburg is pictured next to two of the Michigan Press Association awards he earned, before talking to a group of C-S seniors in Career Coordinator Kevin Langs’ class.
(Photo by Bruce Rolfe)
By Bruce Rolfe
A 2013 Climax-Scotts High School graduate who struggled with bouts of depression, anxiety and even contemplated suicide, has rebounded from what he described as being at rock bottom, to an award winning journalist.Mitchell Vosburg, currently the sports editor at the Escanaba Daily Press, returned to the hallways he used to roam at C-S to give a presentation to seniors in Career Coordinator teacher Kevin Langs’ class May 3.
Vosburg originally had aspirations of becoming a weatherman on television, but he had an intense fear of tornadoes, so he realized that career idea wasn’t going to work.
His thoughts soon turned to a career in broadcasting. However he admits during his first semester at Central Michigan University he found the broadcasting class he attended as “the only class that put him to sleep.” But he did excel in a journalism class he attended and found himself moving in the direction of a career in journalism.
After earning his degree at CMU, where he worked at the student newspaper, Central Michigan Life, Vosburg secured a job working as a sports reporter for the Manistee News-Advocate, a daily newspaper, and the Benzie County Patriot, a weekly newspaper, in February, 2022.
Vosburg said it was during his 16-month stay at the Manistee News Advocate he learned a lot about journalism and a lot about himself.
But he felt he was ready for a bigger challenge and Escanaba was appealing, checking all the boxes of what he was looking for. The C-S graduate received a job offer to be the sports editor of the Escanaba Daily Press in the spring of 2023, and he is enjoying his experience covering local sports in the Upper Peninsula.
He said the Daily Press covers 11 school districts. Vosburg said he’s proud to be part of a team in the sports department that devotes all of its sports pages to local sports.
“There’s so many kids and so many stories to tell in the U.P. and it’s honestly what drove me there in the first place,” said the C-S graduate.
While the budding sports journalist has already earned six awards for his sports writing and two for his photography from the Michigan Press Association, Vosburg struggled with some hardships and dark moments on the journey to where he is today. He said after attending Kalamazoo Valley Community College, he transferred to CMU and admits, like so many other high school graduates, being on your own away from home for the first time, can lead to making poor choices, which he said he fell victim to.
A series of unexpected events and tragedies involving family and friends, combined with some nice things he was able to do while covering sports, left the C-S graduate on an emotional roller coaster.
His parents divorced when he was just shy of his 16th birthday.
Then his grandmother on his father’s side, Nellie Lou Vosburg, suffered a severe injury from a fall and landed in the ICU, but has since recovered.
He lost his confidence as a sports writer so he quit his job at CM Life. He wound up as an intern in the CMU Athletic Department, but he said he was fired after eight months because of poor choices.
Vosburg said for the next 18 months he hung around with friends, uncertain about his future.
Another medical challenge in the family left him depressed. Vosburg said his grandfather on his dad’s side, Jan Vosburg, was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma that left him going through a series of brutal treatments and surgeries to keep him alive.
His grades at CMU started to slip as well.
After he learned his grandfather was improving, he decided to make an adjustment and get back into what he enjoyed doing, which was writing. That was in February, 2020, however the following month the pandemic hit, which he said started a downward spiral emotionally.
“All of a sudden, my whole career that I wanted, it was gone like that. Thrown aside for three months. So I’m going to deal with all of that. All the poor choices I made. That was a lot to process. Honestly, after my grandpa overcame cancer and my brother the year before winning a national championship in baseball from Concordia University in Ann Arbor, I hated the guy I saw in the mirror,” explained Vosburg.
The C-S graduate said one night after he came home from working at Papa Johns, he started heading towards his bedroom when some new thoughts entered his mind.
“I felt like, dude, just end it. Just kill yourself. I thought, okay, well that’s weird. That’s a new thought. I’m going to sleep this off then I’m going to see where it goes from there. I slept it off and then the next morning, I had my hands up in the vanity of my sink. I look at myself. Hated what I saw in myself. I absolutely hated it with a passion,” recalled Vosburg.
However, he then started to think about what the impact of taking his own life would have on his family and friends. “I thought about how my family would react. How my cousins would have to tell my cousins, including Brody, who’s actually my cousin in eighth grade. How I was never going to be back. How I would never see him again at Christmas. How my cousins would be there with their kids. How my brother would have to deal with that. And how my mom was going to deal with that. I was ready to accept that. And in that moment too, I had a thought.
I thought about the people in that scenario that weren’t going to show up (to his funeral),” Vosburg told the group of C-S seniors.
The Escanaba Daily Press sports editor said he recently learned he has been dealing with anxiety. He discovered the same part of the brain that channels nervousness also deals with excitement.
“So my brain’s always been in a constant state or worst case scenario. It caused me a lot of time to have speech impediment issues. It caused me a lot to think less of people. That wasn’t the kid that, honestly, you wanted to hang out with. So I had a lot of lonely nights. I wouldn’t want to be friends with me either at that point,” explained Vosburg.
Vosburg said as he continued to think about the people he felt treated him poorly and wouldn’t show up to his funeral, “I got mad ... I picked my head up, looked in the mirror and for the first time in my life. My eyes are brown. I didn’t see brown, I saw fire. I promised myself at that point, no more excuses, no more b.s. Everything I want in life, I’m grabbing by the throat and I’m not letting go. So I finally got serious about myself. I got back into writing, got back to CMU Life. And within six months of being back there, I went from a reporter to the editor and got to run the sports department. I got to cover football. I got to do a lot of great things. My friends started taking me seriously again. I was ready to take on the world,” offered Vosburg.
However the unexpected death of Zack Boyer, a good friend he met at CMU, and the unexpected death of his good friend Dony Sowles, who is also a C-S graduate, brought more depression.
Close to earning his degree at CMU, Vosburg had a very memorable opportunity when he was assigned to cover what was supposed to be CMU facing Boise State in the Barstool Sports Arizona Bowl. But the game, slated for New Year’s Eve, was canceled on Dec. 27, 2021 when Boise State pulled out because of Covid. Fortunately, Washington State needed an opponent for the Sun Bowl because Miami, Florida also bowed out due to Covid.
So the C-S graduate and CM Life’s photo editor drove 10 hours round trip across three states for a football game in El Paso, Texas. He found the experience very uplifting, however thoughts of what he was going to do when he returned to Michigan after he graduated from CMU, began to creep into his mind.
He also learned his grandfather on his mother’s side, Richard Thompson, was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.
Vosburg said a job position at the Manistee News-Advocate his roommate turned down, was offered to him, so he moved to Manistee when he was 27.
He admits his confidence was low and he doubted his writing skills.
However Vosburg was recognized in four categories in the 2023 Michigan Press Association’s Better Newspaper Contest. He also claimed first place in the sports writing and photo story categories in the 2022 MPA Better Newspaper Contest. He said the awards, especially first place in sports writing and first place in photo story, have injected real belief that he is doing a good job in his career.
“At that moment, I finally realized I could actually believe in myself. Which was huge. And yeah, I got so ramped up in thinking I’m just going to fail again, like I always do. I didn’t see that this career I have chosen gives me the opportunity to document history, to be an immortalizer,” said Vosburg.
More tragedy entered Mitchell’s life when he learned his grandmother on his mother’s side, Patricia Thompson, had a stroke and died approximately 30 minutes before he could get to the hospital.
Still grieving over the loss of his grandmother, Vosburg started his current job as sports editor at the Escanaba Daily Press a short time later, however another new location with no friends brought anxiety.
The nickname “Big Dog” given to him by a CMU roommate, appears as a byline before each of his stories. He said it serves as a reminder that, “very similar to the big dog itself, adversity is nothing more than a combination of nine letters.”
As he reflected on the awards he has received, the C-S graduate thought back to all of the setbacks and challenges he encountered on his journey and offered some important words to the class of C-S seniors.
“Don’t be afraid to lose. Because, with your victories, you’ll find purpose. With your purpose, you’ll have your legacy. I’m still writing my legacy. But right now I think it’s kind of safe to say
I’m the guy that crawled from rock bottom, went from undesirable and unhirable. It’s unbelievable,” said Vosburg, who is also the voice for U.P. sports during the basketball and softball seasons.
Vosburg emphasized he’s at a good place in life because of his experience at C-S.
“Obviously, I’m not where I’m at now without it. Obviously, I had some great mentors. Josh Vick saw something in my writing that made me believe that I could do it. Mrs. Murphy was the one teacher that was hard that honestly was the best teacher in high school I’ve ever had. But also a lot of lessons I learned from Coach Kevin Langs about making the hard and right choices. About the three most important things in life being relationships, relationships and relationships. So a lot of my identity, a lot of my core is based off what I got here. Pretty grateful to say that I was in a place that nurtured me like that,” said Vosburg.
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