Getting to know Pounding the Rock’s writers: Marilyn Dubinski

Growing up a San Antonian and Spurs fan to actually writing about them has fulfilled many dreams.

Welcome to “Getting to know Pounding the Rock’s writers”! During the All-Star break, we thought it we be fun to get to know a little bit more about our writers here at PtR, beginning with Marilyn Dubinski.

A bit about myself

I was born and raised in San Antonio, TX. My ties to the city go back several generations on both sides of my family, making my Spurs fandom set in stone. I grew up playing soccer and basketball, but when it came time to pick a sport (since the two overlap in high school sports), I stuck with soccer and ended up making varsity goalkeeper all four years. Along with the Spurs and soccer, I am also a big fan of college football (Gig ‘em, Aggies!) but not the NFL, probably because San Antonio doesn’t have a team.

I grew up a geography nerd, looking at map atlases and watching The Weather Channel while other kids were reading normal books and watching 90’s cartoons. As a result, I went to Texas A&M University hoping to fulfill my lifelong dream of being a meteorologist and that person who gave you your weekly forecast, but I eventually realized that degree just wasn’t for me. So I switched to a newly-created major called “Spatial Science” (basically the study of the earth’s surface from space), and eventually got a job mapping pipelines, which fulfilled the map nerd in me. Some 13 years later, I’m with the same company as a Senior Pipeline Integrity Analyst and have moved to Houston both for work and to be closer to my two nephews. (But I still am and always will be a San Antonian at heart!)

How I become a Spurs fan

Spurs fandom has always been in my blood. I grew up idolizing David Robinson but only began watching the team on a regular basis when Tim Duncan came along, mainly because the timing aligned with my twin and I becoming old enough that my mom trusted us to get our homework done before watching the games. We especially loved watching with our grandmother, who was a huge fan, and we were thrilled that she finally got to see them win a championship in 1999 before she passed.

Probably the moment I truly realized what the Spurs meant to me came in 2008. I was still at Texas A&M (changing majors added a year) while my identical twin, Alice, had graduated and moved to Houston as a math teacher. It was two days before our 23rd birthday and also the opening day of the Spurs’ 2008-09 season. I got home from class to find my parents waiting for me, having traveled from San Antonio to College Station, and I instantly knew something was horribly wrong. Sure enough, Alice had unexpectedly passed away in her sleep the night before. We headed to Houston to deal with that and tell my older sister, who was an English teacher at the time.

After everything had settled that night, I spent some of the evening going to other rooms to have a cry on my own or call our friends to tell them what had happened, but I also found myself checking the Spurs score from time-to-time. Those little instances took my attention off the horrors of the real world that day and put my mind on something else. The Spurs remained a therapeutic outlet for me from then on, and my love for them has never waivered.

How I ended up at Pounding the Rock

I discovered Pounding the Rock as a fan in 2012 during the Spurs’ resurgence into (true) title contention and instantly found a home in the community. Then, in the summer of 2016, J.R. Wilco, PtR’s Editor-in-Chief, contacted me and asked if I was interested in contributing. The LaMarcus Aldridge drama of that summer had got me going (because I still believed the Spurs were infallible) and I guess J.R. liked my passion. I already had a little bit of writing experience, having covered the Spurs for Bleacher Report back in 2010, so I said yes.

Now, almost eight years later, I’m still here loving my second calling as much as ever, even if I have only covered one truly “good” season in 2016-17. (It may not always show in my writing, but behind the scenes I can get pretty mad about losing.) I’ve risen the ranks from contributor to lead editor and deputy manager (not real titles, just whatever you want to call second behind Editor-in-Chief). I’m nowhere close to being tired of it, but winning the lottery and drafting Victor Wembanyama has certainly brought a new life to the job and has been the highlight of my writing career so far (not even getting called out by Shaq comes close).

I don’t plan on going anywhere anytime soon, and I am beyond grateful to J.R. and the entire PtR Community for continuing to trust and believe in me. I wouldn’t still be here without all of your support, so thank you again from the bottom of my Silver and Black heart!