Started in 2000, the Literature of Sport English elective offered to juniors and seniors of Palo Alto High School has grown increasingly popular over the last decade. Through it’s fourteen years of existence, the class has always started the same way.

Each student signs up to read the columns of the modern sports world on subjects that most interest them. They stand in front of the class, paper in hand, and read their column to the students waiting in silence. After each student has done so, they are assigned to write their own column, allowing them to provide their own commentary on anything they find interesting in the sports world.

For fourteen years “Sports Lit” has been run this way. It’s different, it’s unique and it’s something that students at Paly have come to cherish. Many of the same virtues that students feel are similar to the class’s instructor, Ronald Michael McNulty.

Although McNulty has been working in Palo Alto Unified School District for over 20 years, his ability to connect to his students and get them to be excited about learning is still very much present.

McNulty’s kind and easy-going attitude has allowed him to make friends from the locker room to the classroom during his two decade stint at Paly.

“He’s a guy that you want to get to know,” Paly head football coach Earl Hansen said. “He adds flavor to your life. He’s special; you talk to him and he has great insight, he’s funny. He has the type of things you want in a friend.”

As McNulty’s time here at Paly comes to a close, one would think that he would turn to look back on his body of work and wonder about his legacy. But, as humble as ever, McNulty just hopes that he did his job as a teacher.

Born in Seattle, Wash. in 1946, McNulty was playing catch before he could walk. The son of an avid sports fan and semi-professional athlete, the world of athletics was ingrained in McNulty at a young age. Although he claims to love anything classified as ‘a sport,’ he played competitive baseball and basketball in high school, following the sports at the professional level indefatigably.

Despite his involvement in the athletic community in high school, it was in college that McNulty made his professional debut in sports. Graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in Communications, McNulty started off as an English major only to realize his love for the three prong make-up of Communications: Advertising, writing and broadcast.

While at Gonzaga, he worked as a play-by-play radio announcer in Spokane for the Rangers AAA farm-league team and ran his own sports column in the school paper, The Gonzaga Bulletin.

18 days after McNulty received his diploma from Gonzaga, he found himself stationed stateside with the United States Army. As the United States began its involvement in Vietnam, McNulty traveled to the small southeast Asian country where he would live for the next 17 months. McNulty worked in a radio station and played records for his first 11 months, then going on to a local TV station as program director and anchor.

After his dischargement from the army, McNulty worked a variety of jobs including the Public Relations director position at Santa Clara University. Looking for new work after Santa Clara, McNulty was contacted by a friend who worked as Personnel Director at Milpitas School District. With no prior intent or thought of becoming a teacher by any means, McNulty was told that his life experience was something that made him a prime candidate for any teaching position in the area.

McNulty had difficulty contacting possible schools where he would be able to become certificated, but eventually settled at Notre Dame de Namur University in Belmont, Calif.

“It was strange,” McNulty said. “I hadn’t been to school in about 25 years. Notre Dame set me up with student teaching, and wanted me to teach for a year: one semester of middle school, one semester of high school.”

McNulty was sent to Jane Lanthrop Stanford Middle School in Palo Alto, Calif. where he learned to become a teacher under instructor Jane Bab.

“Talk about having a mentor – she was great,” McNulty said. “[Wanting to get more recognition and a possible larger job], I decided that it would probably be a good idea to have the principal observe me.”

Just following principal Jim Mathiott’s observation of McNulty, Palo Alto High School sent out a message district-wide, asking for a potential journalism instructor. Longtime journalism teacher and Campanile advisor Esther Wojcicki had announced that she would be going on sabbatical, and the school sought a replacement for the year.

Remembering McNulty’s past experiences in sports journalism and PR work, Mathiott suggested the Gonzaga graduate as a potential candidate. McNulty was immediately offered a 60 percent internship that made him advisor of the Campanile for the spring of 1993 through the 1994 school year and a Beginning Journalism and English teacher.

“[McNulty] came in and he was all dressed up in a suit,” Wojcicki said, remembering when she first met McNulty. “He looked super nice. But he was a little on the nervous side. He told me all about how he had worked at the Santa Clara University and what he had done. I could tell immediately that I really liked him. I then got his resumé and all of the paperwork on him and I said he was the right one.”

After working through his internship, McNulty was offered a full-time job as English teacher at Palo Alto High School.

It was his third year of teaching that most resonated with McNulty, however. The foundation of the Together Everyone Achieves More (TEAM) program had been set-up with McNulty working as the core English teacher for all incoming freshman classes.

“[I loved TEAM] because there’s something about working with freshman,” McNulty said. “It’s a fresh start for them and whether they’re good or bad, they’re going to pay attention for a while. I loved that because you get a chance to do so many different [educational activities].”

After McNulty’s first few years working in the TEAM core, a new English elective course was brought to attention and would be available to Palo Alto juniors and seniors: Film Composition. Founded in the 1998-99 school year, Film Comp was the first English elective other than Humanities to be offered to upperclassmen at the school. The addition of Film Comp, which was founded off the teacher’s inclination of analyzation of film and video, sparked an idea in McNulty’s mind.

If so many students, who loved to watch movies, would be able to apply English to one of their favorite activities, McNulty thought, there should be alternative opportunities for others with differing interests.

“I always thought about a sports class,” McNulty said. “It was always in the back of my mind.”

His thought truly turned to action largely due in part to conversations between McNulty and fellow English teacher Pete Heilman. An avid sports fan, Heilman compared his notes of sports articles and modern events with McNulty two to three times a week. The idea of a Literature of Sports English class first arose during one distinct conversation.

“[Heilman] told me, ‘I think the best literature I read is sports,’” McNulty said. “And that always stayed with me for some reason. I was obviously in love with sports literature, but hearing it from someone else was exciting for me.”

Eager to create an English elective of his own, McNulty went to Tom Schellenberg, the then-English Department head and asked about the creation of an English class entirely based off of literature of sports. With Schellenberg’s approval, McNulty wrote up a course guide and lesson plan and sent it to the University of California system, establishing the Literature of Sport indefinitely.

During the same time, Wojcicki had the idea to start a podcast at Palo Alto High School. The idea was to introduce an increasingly popular and more prevalent journalism style to students known as broadcast journalism.

With the help and efforts of McNulty, the two began the school’s first broadcasting station in the old Media Arts building. The publication would be entirely student run, similar to the only other publications at the time, the Campanile and Madrono yearbook. The broadcast station that was run initially at brunch became a major publication for students interested in journalism, and was added as a class for those with an inclination in the broadcast journalism field. After the broadcast’s first few years as an extracurricular activity, it was added to the Paly course directory as InFocus – a live-streaming feed that would be played at the end of every third and fourth period in the Paly daily schedule.

Emerging into the early 2000s, technology evolved and more opportunities came to exist in the classroom and in athletics. McNulty was approached by head football coach Earl Hansen regarding a possible job that McNulty had experience in before his time at Palo Alto High School.

The then-announcer of the daytime football games and former basketball head coach Peter Diepenbrock didn’t want his commentating position anymore as renovations of lights and night games made their way into Harold “Hod” Ray Stadium. Hansen asked if the English teacher and former Santa Clara play-by-play announcer was interested in taking over for Diepenbrock in calling all night time football games over the intercom. McNulty accepted, taking on yet another role in the Palo Alto athletic community. To this day, McNulty announces all home football games for the Vikings.

“He’s the right guy for the job because he understands the game and he knows the kids, so he can match the two,” Hansen said. “How many times do you have an announcer that has a connection with the players? That’s huge.”

As time went on in the 2000’s, Palo Alto High School developed one of the largest high school journalism programs in the country. Additions of Verde Magazine, The Voice online and several other printed publications distinguished the high school on a national level.

Then, in 2007, Palo Alto High School established the United States’ first ever sports magazine published at the high school level. English and journalism teacher Ellen Austin was chosen as the advisor of the publication, helping it to three Columbia Gold Crown Awards. In 2013, after Austin took the Journalism Director title at the Harker School, McNulty was elected to be an interim advisor for the 2013-14 school year.

“Mac was the obvious choice to take over the reins of Viking as the adviser this year, given his experience and his knowledge of sports journalism,” Austin said. “Plus, he’s just such an awesome guy, and nobody rocks a Hawaiian shirt better than Mac. He’s really an original, and it’s hard to imagine Paly journalism without him.”

At the beginning of the 2013-14 year, McNulty announced his plans to retire. Along with McNulty, Paly will lose important icons of the Palo Alto sports community such as the Big Gym, the Steve Silver weight room and longtime head football coach Earl Hansen. McNulty’s efforts, both in the classroom, on the sidelines and in the press box, will be remembered for quite some time.

His quiet and laid back personality are some of the traits that have not only encouraged his students to do well but have also helped incoming staff by leaving them with valuable teaching plans and a bona fide student-teacher relationship model to follow.

Current boys’ lacrosse head coach DJ Shelton (‘08) was a student of McNulty’s and still maintains a close relationship with him, something that was unique to Shelton as a student. Shelton recognizes McNulty’s admirable characteristics and attests to what makes him stand out as a teaher.

“[What makes him special is] his personality for sure,” Shelton said. “He’s really personable, really funny and keeps a good, light feeling in the classroom. But honestly, from an academic standpoint, being an educator myself, he’s probably one of the few teachers at the school that help struggling kids do well in his class in getting A’s because they’re really passionate about the curriculum. I think he’s great at tapping into kids who haven’t really felt to be part of the common aspect of school because they aren’t interested in Biology or Advanced Math.”

Succeeding McNulty as a teacher of Literature of Sport, Robert Rojas has also seen these traits up-close.

“Mac has been the most supportive teacher in helping me and giving me really meaningful materials, lessons and stories that students are genuinely interested in in Sports Lit,” Rojas said. “He has quite a connection with his students. He loves them and they love him. And as cheesy as that sounds, there’s something genuine and we don’t see it so much so more. When he talks to them, you see how much he loves the career of teaching, especially on the subject of sports.”

It’s quite a feat, teaching for over 20 years. McNulty has made numerous, priceless contributions to the Palo Alto sports community, to his students and to Palo Alto High School. He’s been a quality teacher, an understanding journalist adviser and a friend to students and faculty alike. Although he won’t admit it, it was Mac’s ideas and work along with the help of several other teachers at Paly that led to the successfulness of a diverse English and journalism curriculum.

“I couldn’t begin to talk about a legacy,” McNulty said. “I just hope that kids get something out of it. I hope that if anybody has been in my class, that they’ve gotten something out of it and enjoyed at least a part of it. Teachers come and go, but I will miss this place a great deal.”