A decorated sports journalist and widely respected member of the Gibson County community for decades, Pete Swanson has spent the better part of three decades covering Oakland City University athletics.

After attending the University of Illinois, Swanson spent stints covering local sports in Illinois and Ohio before arriving in Evansville, where he spent nearly 20 years covering prep sports, the University of Evansville athletics, and minor league baseball, for the Evansville Sunday Courier & Press.

While in Evansville, his 1971 story on the Purple Aces championship season was published in Sports Illustrated.

In 1989, Swanson became the Sports Editor for the Princeton Daily Clarion. There he covered Wood Memorial High School, Princeton Community High School, and Gibson Southern High School, in addition to covering every sport that Oakland City University had to offer. After 17 years, Swanson retired from the Daily Clarion.

However, his passion for covering OCU and Gibson County prep sports drove him out of retirement, where he returned to his position as the Daily Clarion Sports Editor from 2008-2015, when he again retired.

At the time of his induction, Swanson continues to cover OCU athletics as a contributing writer for the Daily Clarion, providing the majority of the paper's coverage of OCU athletics. 

In addition to being inducted into the Oakland City University Athletic Hall of Fame, Swanson was inducted into the newly founded Indiana Sports Hall of Fame in 2022. 

Swanson was a devoted husband to his wife Donna from their marriage in 1994 until her death in 2021. Swanson resides in Newburgh, Indiana, where he makes the trip to Oakland City numerous times a year to cover events.