Meet Bright Side’s own Woman of SB Nation, as well as the many others around the network

And you thought we were all a bunch of dudes, unemployed, sitting on our couches, one hand on the cell, the other doing 12-ounce curls, yelling out “Mom! Where’s my meatloaf!” while scrolling twitter and wondering where the hell the day went when we finally realize the sun went down.

You thought I’d say when the sun “came up” didn’t you. Pshhh. We sports bloggers need our beauty sleep. You’re lucky to get game recaps on the same night the game ends. Basketball blogging and twitting universally goes silent during those witching hours. We are respectable dudes after all! We need our rest, so we can wake up bright and early and check our gloriously long — but almost never substantive — overnight twitter feed before our eyes can even focus.

Imagine the collective shock the other morning when we all awoke to the Kawhi trade news, a story that broke in the wee hours of the night.

NOTHING HAPPENS IN THE WEE HOURS. Big news rarely break before noon, and almost never after midnight. Unless it’s July 1. And even then, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver has already promised the opening of free agency will be moved to a much more respectable hour next year and for the foreseeable future. We all need our sleep, dammit.

Because when news breaks, that’s when the sports bloggers, including those covering the Phoenix Suns spring into action. We have a think about the news for a minute, then group-text our friends for collective reaction, then think a little more, then either pop on an emergi-pod — by far the laziest but quickest way to get OUR take out there — or sit down at the desk and pound out a story.

And that’s when the subject of this article steps in.

For the past several months — almost a year now — you don’t know it, dear reader, but we at Bright Side have had a scheduling and editorial process in place. And that process is led by a very unique individual who happens to buck the entire profile of a sports blogger.

Meet Courtney, or ‘Courtneyna’ as she’s known around these here parts.

Courtney sometimes writes about the Suns herself, in the form of her Little Miss Brightside posts, but most of the time she’s sitting behind the scenes, scheduling our stories, making sure we complete our sentences, don’t use too much profanity, and generally don’t embarrass ourselves no matter how hot the take.

Courtney’s not here to change up styles. She lets Jim be Jim. Lets Evan use as many ‘alongsides’ as he wants. :) Let’s me be me. Loves editing the super-long film studies occasionally (and not often enough) submitted by Yusuf, and now (hopefully on the regular) by David Nash. Loves when writers plan ahead and submit their articles the day before they’re due (shouts to Rod, Deadpoolio, Greg for being most consistent with that!).

She takes in all the writer’s quirks, helps them keep their voice, deals with “here’s five articles all ready at the same time by different i-want-it-posted-now writers when can they post how soon can they post why hasn’t mine posted yet” and does it all with a (public) smile on her face.

Like most of the rest of us on Bright Side, Courtney has a ‘day’ job. She has a background that none of us can touch, including a long career as a professional dancer and ballerina before getting into real analytical “grown up” work by day and editing by night. She sings, writes music and — if you’ve read her Little Miss Brightside posts, you know — is a talented writer in her own right. Oh and I hear she’s working on a girly tell-all book that — hoo boy when it publishes — will probably set the world on fire. No it’s not about blogging and editing.

But she gladly finds time throughout her busy day to once-over most of our stories (I’m her backup on that) and get them reasonably scheduled out so we all don’t clobber each other’s readers.

We are lucky to have her in our Bright Side fold.

Now read a little more about our little editor. SB Nation reached out to the dozens of women in pro blogging and profiled many of them in this five-part series.

The link below takes you to the ‘story stream’. Start with the first article of the series that includes Courtney’s bio among the others. And then read the subsequent articles for more on Courtney.

It’s a five-art series through Friday. Find out a lot about Courtney and our other strong SB Nation female contributors.

Direct link to the story stream here, which will eventually contain all five articles.

Bios

How they fell in love with the NBA

And the challenges they’ve faced