Grew up in a small, sports-obsessed town in Central Massachusetts and attended three local colleges in five years, eventually graduating Framingham State with an English degree in 2007.  According to a letter to my future self -- penned as an eighth-grader -- I've long had dreams of becoming a sports journalist. But I didn't really do anything about it until my third semester at FSC (now U). That's when my professor (thanks, Desmond) convinced me to quit messing around in nonsense classes, join the school paper and get an internship. I did.  I was hired out of college to the Bedford Minuteman newspaper, and bounced around to a few of the Minuteman's sister papers, including The Concord Journal and Belmont Citizen-Herald, before joining Patch in April 2011 as Lexington's editor.

Heard some news you want us to check out? Let me know:

email: Patrick.Ball@patch.com

phone: 781-530-0029