Ever cover two games at the same time?

Closest I ever came to this was at my first paper out of college almost 20 years ago (five-day-a-week community scrapbook, one-man staff, you know the drill).

Local school is hosting its annual track meet while the baseball team plays its district opener out of town (no softball at the time, thank God). I listened to baseball on the radio while shooting the track. Got a lot of curious looks from track coaches as I filled in the baseball scorebook.

 

Covered a state soccer tournament with adjacent fields. One city school kindly blew out their opposition so I could focus on the other city school, who won 1-0 with a fluky goal off a set piece late in the game. Games started at 10 a.m. so I had time to write.

A few years later I covered district baseball games on adjacent fields by sitting on the top row of bleachers at one field and keeping an eye on the other field. Coaches understood what I had to do so they kindly filled in whatever blanks I had.

 

I did it a couple of times at my last stop, a weekly. Since I didn't need to keep my own boxscores, I could split my attention, and cover both. One school had a pressbox that overlooked the football/soccer stadium on one side, the baseball and softball fields on the other, so once I was able to do three games at the same time. Performed on a test course, do not attempt in the real world.

Wouldn't recommend it, but if you're organized enough and you've got a game going (soccer) where there isn't that much going on for long stretches, you can pull it off.

 

I've never covered two games at once, but I did write seven stories at last fall's Florida state swimming finals. I was catatonic by the time I finished, and I botched one story so badly I never bothered to ask for payment.

 

This is like a regular occurrence for me at my one-man sports shop that tries to cover six high schools, especially in the spring ...

Obviously you don't "cover the game" but you go to say one school, take lots of pics of softball, soccer and baseball going on at the same time, hustle as much information as you can at each stop and then come back and write up whatever you can -- then later write roundups for all the games you didn't see, process photos, design pages, curse at the coaches who send stuff in right at the edge of deadline, curse the coaches that you wanted to hear from that didn't call you back, load everything on the web, and go home at say 3 or 4 a.m. wondering how you ever got into this profession...

Then two days later, rinse and repeat...

One day a few years ago, I went to a playoff tennis match at one school (4 p.m. start), and then a softball-baseball simulataneous doubleheader at another about 35 minutes away (6 p.m. start) and then hustled back to see the end of a big baseball game at the other end of the county (7:30 p.m. start). Fortunately on that night, everything worked well enough for me to arrive just in time to see the big plays... wrote some decent "stories" out of all that mess ...

 

I covered a baseball doubleheader and a softball doubleheader at the same time before. I knew one coach was better at getting stats than the other, so I covered the game I knew I would get the least info from. In between games at one, I went to the other to snap photos. Made sure to catch the coach before the firs DH ended.

For some reason, I felt incredibly stupid doing it.

 

Whether anyone likes it or not, this sort of thing is going to happen more and more as manpower gets cut. Either you do it or you don't get to enough people and they lose interest.

 

Why all the trouble to write gamers? Why isn't a phone call to one coach the next day good enough or catch the kids at practice the next day? It seems like people are killing themselves and the writing suffers, because your gamers aren't going to be the greatest if you are splitting your time between two or three events going on at the same time.

 

No, but I have loved two women at the same time.<p>

You tell me which is more difficult. ???

 

Well back in the day there might have been two or three people to cover the two or three events, but that's not the case anymore. Less people are doing more work. For that reason, product is suffering in one way or another no matter what you do.

The other problem with this is getting people to call in, which is not done consistently. Also, I've found that I need to see teams to write anything that even smacks of authority on them, and I'm sure a lot of people agree. Got more teams than you have warm bodies? This sort of doubletasking becomes almost inevitable.

These weren't going on at the same time, but for years on Friday nights I've covered varsity volleyball matches that begin a couple hours before football. I'd (usually) have enough time to see the whole match and maybe even get a quick little sound bite from the coach(es) and produce, say, an 8-incher. Sometimes less when there wasn't enough room, but it was guaranteed to get in unlike depending on the team to call in - either they do or they don't. Plus, then nobody can bitch about you not ever being at their games.

Your publisher would probably love to pink-slip your entire sports staff and have coaches call in, all the time. They do that for free, when they do, while they have to pay folks like you and me.

 

Yep, a lot of nights here the local high school will have a tripleheader in rugby and a doubleheader in soccer on the same night. Usually I'll focus on one sport but keep an eye on the other field.

Usually, the games were staggered enough that I could get a feel for both games and have time to talk to the coaches and players at different times.
Then, of course, neither soccer nor rugby coverage is as naturally stats-driven as baseball, football, or basketball.

 

Have tried, it doesn't work well at all. One of the two is going to suffer.