It is midnight at the Arlington Morning News. Reporters run around the newsroom and pass around pages for editing; some call coaches to collect football scores.

What many would see as chaos, to Coppell High School Sidekick newspaper adviser Chase Wofford, was just another Friday night.

“I loved coming back after I’d cover a game, coming back to the newsroom and have everybody in there,” Wofford said. “That energy and buzz in the newsroom is something that gets in your blood.”

The passion Wofford found at AMN would follow him into newsroom of The Sidekick.

Wofford wrote for the University of Alabama’s newspaper The Crimson White in college, until returning to his hometown of Arlington to cover sports for AMN. After writing for other publications in Collin County, he applied for a job in journalism unlike any he’d had before.

Twelve years ago, Wofford became the adviser of The Sidekick, a position he filled with all the experience and drive that his former newsrooms gave him.

“I put the pressure on myself that you have these kids that are very talented, they can do great things, they are passionate about this subject just as you are, you’ve got to make sure that things are maximized, don’t lower your expectations for anything,” Wofford said.

Many students go through Wofford’s program for four years, including Sidekick executive sports editor Marcus Krum, who plans to major in Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin in the fall.

“He played a huge role in my growing as a journalist and being able to improve my interviewing skills, my writing skills, my editing skills,” Krum said. “He’s just been the best leader you could ask for, because he’s hands-off, letting us do our thing but at the same time he’s also been really helpful in every way that we needed.”

When KCBY Director Irma Kennedy came to CHS in 2006, Wofford was her teacher-mentor. Since then, not only have KCBY and the Sidekick converged together, but Kennedy has come to know Wofford as a “true friend”.

“Mr. Wofford is a wonderful educator and a wonderful friend,” Kennedy said. “We are so much alike in that we are crazy about news and so we are always talking about a news story. I always say our relationship is very similar to how iron sharpens iron, that scripture in the bible, of how we make each other stronger.”

Under Wofford’s leadership, The Sidekick has created more than 70 unique issues, produced journalists working across the country and received the NSPA Online Pacemaker award – the highest national award in high school journalism.

“To me the craziness of deadlines, the craziness of reporting a story that’s developing in the moment, I love that,” Wofford said. “[Krum] asked me last week if I ever missed working for a newspaper, would I ever go back and I said ‘yeah, I would’, because you get that.”

Congratulations to the May Teacher of the Issue, Chase Wofford.