From: Fort Wayne News-Sentinel
Robin Hartman, editor of The News-Sentinels PrepSports section, died Saturday afternoon at St. Joseph Hospital.
Hartman, 52, had been the PrepSports editor since October 2004 and previously was the PrepStats editor starting in July 2002. PrepStats provided high school sports scores online.
Among Hartmans highlights at The News-Sentinel were stories on Snider and Blackhawk Christian winning state baseball titles last spring, the increasing cost of high school athletic budgets, and the Carroll golf teams retro apparel. He also started the PrepSports academic all-area team.
Robin put his heart and soul into the coverage of high school athletics, said Linda Austin, executive editor of The News-Sentinel.
He will be greatly missed by his colleagues at the paper and by coaches, athletic directors and players throughout the Fort Wayne area.
On his final assignment for The News-Sentinel, Hartman oversaw the design and execution of the high school football season preview section that was pub-lished Thursday.
Robin was quite a people person, News-Sentinel assistant sports editor Blake Sebring said. Someone could call in screaming mad with a complaint, and by the end of the conversation, they were best friends with him. It wasnt an act with Robin. It was entirely genuine.
Hartman began his career as the news/sports director at WJCK Radio in Rensselaer in 1974, giving him three decades of media experience, most notably as the sports information director at Albion (Mich.) College from 1987 to 2001.
He held the position at a time when technology transformed the way information was gathered and distributed to fans and media alike.
At Albion, he began one of the first small-college Web sites and was a pioneer in using the Internet for streaming audio play-by-play. He was inducted into the Albion Athletic Hall of Fame in 2004.
Aside from the dedication he showed as Albions sports information director, Hartman chaired the Football Gazette All-America committee for three years and served as a voter for two additional years.
Hartman also assisted the University of Michigan, serving as official scorer when the Wolverines hosted Big Ten softball championship tournaments in 1999 and 2002 and NCAA Division I softball regional tournaments in 1995, 1997, 1999 and 2002.
He also served as official scorer for the Kalamazoo Kodiaks of the Frontier League for two seasons and Michigan Battle Cats, now the Battle Creek Yankees, for three seasons.
Hartman is survived by brothers Jim and Tom. Services will be 2 p.m. Saturday at St. Paul's Lutheran downtown, 1126 Barr Street.