(Mar. 19, 1958-Dec. 21, 2018). Terry Hutchens was born in Portland, Oregon, and raised in Southern California. Aiming to be a sportswriter from a young age, Hutchens studied journalism at California State University, Fullerton leaving before he graduated. While there he covered high school sports for the Fullerton Daily News Tribune.

With no previous connection to the state, Hutchens moved to Indiana at age 28 and found work at the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel covering the Indianapolis Colts before taking a job with the Indianapolis News soon after. With the News, he initially covered general assignments through the city before making his way back to sports-focused topics such as high school sporting events and the Tenth Pan American Games.

By 1991, the News named him their Indianapolis Colts beat writer. During this time period, Hutchens also graduated from Indiana University School of Journalism in May 1989. Beginning in 1991 and continuing for many years, he taught sports writing as an adjunct instructor at IUPUI.

The role that earned that him the most acclaim in Indianapolis, as well as the state of Indiana overall, was his time working as a writer covering Indiana University (IU) sports. Hutchens joined the Indianapolis Star in 1998 with an assignment to cover IU’s athletics, primarily the football and men’s basketball teams.

Over the course of his writing career, he covered major Indiana University topics such as the descent of famed men’s basketball coach Bob Knight and the death of football coach Terry Hoeppner. In addition, Hutchens wrote 11 books during his career, 10 of which focused on IU sports.

Hutchens left the Star in 2013 for a position at Scout.com (a sports publishing company that produces Internet content for hundreds of professional and college teams across the U.S.) before later becoming the IU beat writer for CNHI Indiana (formerly Community Newspapers Holdings, Inc., a publisher of newspapers and advertising-related publications).

Hutchens died from injuries sustained in a car crash in Fishers, Indiana. He was named the Indiana Sportswriter of the Year six times.

Revised July 2021
KEY WORDS
Media
CONTRIBUTE

Help improve this entry

Contribute information, offer corrections, suggest images.

You can also recommend new entries related to this topic.