Mission statement

Ascend magazine examines how sports and the outdoors elevate the human spirit and create community. By immersing themselves with subjects and providing in-depth reporting, writers are pushing the boundaries of traditional sports journalism while crafting timeless longform stories and pairing them with stunning photography and design. Operating out of the University of Oregon’s School of Journalism and Communication, Ascend goes beyond stat lines and playing fields and questions what it means to be an athlete, while illuminating how sports and outdoor pursuits bring out the best of humanity. 

History

Visiting professor of practice in sports journalism Ivan Miller joined the University of Oregon’s School of Journalism and Communication full time in the fall of 2024 with the idea of creating a sports magazine. Less than a year later students completed an 11x14, 124-page publication that could forever live on a coffee table. Ascend blends both traditional and outdoor sports, capturing incredible stories of University of Oregon athletes but also top athletes and outdoor personalities across the world.

Featured in the first issue

An editor-in-chief interviewed former Duck basketball standout Sabrina Ionescu and crafted an incredible feature story. Ionescu has over 1.4 million followers on Instagram and is coming off a year in which she won a WNBA championship and a gold medal with the women’s basketball team. She has completely upended the basketball shoe industry, marketing a sneaker for both men and women.

A senior writer and senior photographer traveled to San Diego to report on rock climber Margo Hayes, who is arguably one of the greatest female climbers of all time. The students spent a day following Hayes. The story explores Hayes’ early successes, more recent battle with Lyme disease, and coming to grips with the limits of the human body.

We sent a senior reporter to cover the Big Ten Football Championship in Indianapolis, Indiana. The reporter wrote a feature on the team’s rise in a new college football landscape and partly focuses on a rags to riches structure with wide receiver Tez Johnson, who ended up taking MVP honors in the game, which was the first time his biological parents had ever seen him play.

One writer wrote a feature on University of Oregon heptathlete Gianna Bullock, who has 228,00 followers on Instagram. The story explores what it takes for an athlete to build their own personal brand via social media and NIL endorsements while also training at an elite level.

A sports editor interviewed University of Oregon running legend and 1,500-meter gold medalist Cole Hocker. Working with photographer Jeff Cohen, who shot the Paris Olympics, the writer built a lead around Hocker’s shocking upset of Norway’s Jakob Ingebrigtsen and Britain’s Josh Kerr. The story explores Hocker’s return from injury and one of the all-time great finishes in Olympic track and field history.

We wrote a feature on outdoor photographer Chris Burkard, who is one of the top outdoor personalities in the world and has 3.9 million followers on Instagram. After high school, Burkard dreamed of becoming a surf photographer, like so many other people, but caught a break when his coffee table book was picked up by Urban Outfitters. Later while shooting in some of the top surf locations in the world, he had an epiphany that the shots he was capturing didn’t reflect the true nature of the places he visited, for they were full of tourists and heavily polluted. He decided to shoot cold water locations across the world and made films like Under An Arctic Sky and Unnur. He now lives with his family in Iceland.