The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

The Times is pleased to announced that longtime photographer, sports enthusiast and local resident Tracy Daniel has joined the newspaper as its first dedicated sports writer and photographer.

Together with Publisher Imbert Matthee and Managing Editor Dian McClurg, Daniel will help cover high school sports in the Touchet Valley and beyond, focusing on the Cardinals, Tigers and Bulldogs. "We are thrilled to have Tracy on our team," Matthee said. "Her photography is very creative and she's a lively writer. She thinks out of the box and readers will see that fresh approach reflected in our sports news."

Matthee said Daniel's contributions, which can be seen this week in the Touchet Valley Spring Sports Preview, reflect another step toward improving the Times' sports coverage after the newspaper first dedicated its second section to high school athletics during the school year last year.

Daniel grew up in Prescott, where she was active in a number of sports, including volleyball, basketball, softball and cheerleading for the Tigers. She was an All Conference softball player and twice won the MVP award for softball and volleyball as a junior and a senior.

She graduated in 1994 and represented her class as valedictorian.

"I've been playing ball since peewee league," she said. "Sports have always been something I've been interested in."

Daniel also became interested in photography at an early age. She was 12 when she received her first camera - a Pentax point-and-shoot - as a birthday gift and has been hooked ever since. As a junior, she took senior portraits for a friend a year older, then expanded her offer to fellow seniors before she graduated.

On family vacations to places like the Oregon coast, she would always be busy taking pictures, a hobby she continued later in life on travels across the continent, in Mexico and in Europe.

After attending Spokane Falls Community College, where she took portraiture and other photography classes, she moved to Seattle in 1998 and worked in the photo lab at Kenmore Camera while being a part of the downtown art walk circuit.

After she returned in 2002, Daniel took regular jobs but continued to take wedding pictures and senior portraits. Last year, when her nephew Matt Hamilton joined the Cardinals football team, she began to work her art along the sideline, sharing her pictures with the families of other athletes as well. She continued documenting the sports teams during basketball season.

"I just love photographing the kids and giving them memories to share forever," she said. "I'm so excited to have an opportunity to contribute (to The Times). Being a part of this (team) puts a smile on my face."

Daniel is currently working on a pastoral local calendar project called "Out To Pasture," which may be published this year. Meanwhile, she's bar manager at the White Stallion Restaurant in Waitsburg and works as a groom for race horse trainer Bill Hof.