Meet Ravanne Tinsay, the newest member of The Desert Sun sports team

When Ravanne Tinsay was a junior at Shadow Hills High school, in the spirit of meeting new people and trying something different, she joined the school newspaper, cleverly called the Knight Times.

Despite having only a casual interest in sports at that time, thanks to her time on the JV softball team, Tinsay was tasked with covering some of the Knights’ athletic teams. It took only a couple games of watching the players play, the coaches coach and interviewing them afterward before she was hooked.

“I wasn’t expecting to love it, but once I got a taste of it I was like ‘I want to do more,'” said Tinsay whose first name is pronounced like the word raven. “The next year as a senior, the sports editor job was open and I just said ‘That’s mine.’ And I got it.”

Flash ahead two years and Tinsay, now a sophomore at College of the Desert, is “doing more” in the sports journalism field. She has joined The Desert Sun as a fall sports intern. She’ll be providing stories, video and social media interaction for the sports team from now until mid-December thanks to a grant-funded position provided by the Coachella Valley Journalism Foundation.

The position was generously sponsored by Nancy Cunningham in honor of her late father Tommy Devine who was a noted sports journalist in the 1950s and 60s. He worked for United Press and as a longtime columnist at The Detroit Free Press with his “Love Letters to a Sports Editor” column. He followed that up with a stint as a boxing writer and color commentator and wound down his career as the sports editor of The Miami News.

“He would be very proud to know we were helping an aspiring sports journalist achieve their goals,” Cunningham said. That aspiring journalist is Tinsay, who began her tenure at The Desert Sun on Sept. 8. She said what excites her most about this opportunity is the chance to simply level up, both in her craft and the action she will now get to chronicle.

“As a sports editor in high school, I went to exclusively high school events, and while I’ll still be covering a lot of high school sports, I’ll also get to experience sports at a higher level whether it’s Firebirds hockey, pro tennis, college basketball … that’s pretty exciting to me,” Tinsay said. “As is becoming a better writer, and learning more abut the industry.”

A little backstory on Tinsay. She was raised in Las Vegas then lived in Murietta for a couple years before moving to the desert for her freshman year at Shadow Hills High where she went all four years. Her given name is Rachel Anne, but she has gone by Ravanne (as a reminder, that’s pronounced like the word Raven) since she moved to the desert.

The sport she knows the best, aside from softball, is hockey, and if you don’t see her on the sideline or at the rink, you might spot the Indio native walking Josie, which is her 3-year-old black lab/German shepherd mix.

She said the simple building blocks of journalism — talking to new and interesting people and providing a service to her community — appeal to her, but really she has two goals in mind with this internship.

“Learn as much as possible, and I guess, have some fun, too,” she said. “And I know the skills I learn, particularly when it comes to video, social media and writing, will certainly be useful in whatever lies ahead for me.”

“Maybe I’ll just end up being an influencer,” she said jokingly. “Not really, but if I did, I guess I’d have a lot of the right skills.”

This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Meet Ravanne Tinsay, the newest member of The Desert Sun sports team