Dear dimwit on the phone

Actually received this email:

Hi, do you have an email for Spartan? Thanks.
Spartan Squad Sports Editor

I'm currently wading through a list of wise-ass responses to give this PR guy who is obviously bad at his job.

 

They just came out of the woodwork this week.

We covered four high school football playoff games Saturday, and one caller was upset that his grandson's team was not the one in the photo on the A1 skybox tease (they try just as hard, you know). Gamer for that team was on B1, but never mind, we are disrespecting that team by not putting its photo in the A1 tease.

E-mailer was upset that we did not mention that an athlete is in NHS

E-mailer was upset that at the swimming sectional, we talked more about the local team that nearly won the thing than the local team that barely did anything and actually had kind of a sucky day

Another e-mail from the mother of a swimmer on a relay team upset that we ran a photo of the other three girls on that relay cheering her on from the deck during her leg and her daughter was "distraught" about not being in the photo, despite the fact that she was kind of busy swimming at the time.

 

Four days after the all-area volleyball team was released and dimwit's child wasn't named Player of the Year (she was in the running, but not quite there), dimwit sent this email to just the Podunk Press sports email address:

Please cancel our subscription to the Podunk Press, effective immediately.

What would you do with that? We currently plan to do nothing. If she really wanted to cancel, she wouldn't send it to the sports email.

 

Dimwit at the statistics computer: got a juco box score back with the opponent committing 20 technical fouls. Turns out that, for whatever reason, each personal foul was recorded as a technical.

 

Has anyone ever sent an email to coaches to make sure they spell their players' names correctly on rosters/stat programs?

I'm the veteran of our sports staff, going on almost 4 years at the shop. I can usually spot if a name is misspelled. But I'm not always in the office. And only one other staffer has worked in sports for a year. While we try to double-check if we are unsure about a name, we don't always have the time on deadline to do so. So usually, it's whatever the coach provides, unless we (I) know for a fact it's wrong. And there are probably 5-10 in our area that I know are wrong on rosters just from the first few weeks of winter sports. But rather than reminding our staffers every game how to spell a certain name, finally I decided to email all of our coaches and asked them to double-check their rosters and stat programs to make sure they have the correct spellings. It might not guarantee that it'll be fixed, but I wanted to at least try. By the way, we cover 33 winter sports teams, if you think we should be able to easily remember the correct spelling of every kid in our coverage area.

 

The coach is spelling names the way s/he thinks they are spelled. Some are better than others about confirming with the student-athlete or school records before making up rosters and sending out previews. I don't think a "spelling matters" reminder would really do anything, beyond possibly rile some of the coaches up.

That said, if I receive an e-mail from a parent complaining about a misspelled name, I tend to CC (or BCC) the coach -- and occasionally the athletic director -- in my "Sorry, I'll update our records and run a correction" response.

Aside: I also proofread some of the programs for county-wide luncheons to help the coaches who run the organizations. Some know they can't spell... which doesn't make it any better, but sometimes makes it easier to joke about it.

 

I had a baseball coach who spelled his team captain's name wrong on a consistent basis. Sometimes, they have so many players that it's difficult for them to keep up on all the spellings.

Hell, my last name is a problem for people both in spelling and pronunciation — and it's only five letters — so I try to be sensitive to spellings. Didn't stop me from getting one girl's first name wrong for three years, though, because I'd see it misspelled on a roster or a coach's note and get mixed up.

 

I covered a high school basketball team years ago and spelled the name of one of the top players as Terri all season. She came up to me before the last game and said: "It's Teri with one R."

I wish she had come up to me a lot earlier in the season because I would have fixed it.

 

Honestly, those are the ones that frustrate me the most. I'm fine with people correcting us (if they aren't rude about it), but it agitates me when people see we got something wrong and don't tell us right away. Or if I see it around twitter the next day, but we never actually get a call or email about it.

 

We had a kid who played four years of HS basketball with the first name Tyrone. Common spelling, right? When he went to one our local colleges the next year, his name appeared on the roster as Tyrome. We called the SID, who said that's what the kid put on his info form. Asked the kid and he said his name had always been Tyrome, but everybody called him Tyrone and he was used to it.

Also had a girl, a Parade All-American, who spelled her name one way. Her mom called the office one day and said, no, her first name is this other way. Then after we changed the spelling, the girl complained that we were spelling her name wrong. SE made the decision, we went with momma.

 

Wait, we're not the only ones who went through that BS?!? The girl got called by her full first name to avoid the "what's the right way to spell the nickname she made up?" argument anymore.

 

I had a coach spell the first and second names of his players for me three years ago. He spelled one girl's first name Kacey. I went with that spelling the entire season. In the middle of her second season on the team, her mom tells me it's actually spelled Kasey!
Also, where I am we have Saunders and Sanders. Better not mistake one for the other!
On to another issue, I have coaches text or email both sides of their scorebooks after basketball games (I could go on and one about that). Now what's grinding my gears so far this season is one school sends in scoresheets for their opponents with first names and initials for the last name!!!