How to survive spring sports madness (preps)

I love spring sports - lots of variety, a chance to get outside again, etc. but this is when I dread being a one-man show because there are five schools x 7 different teams at each school (track, softball, baseball, soccer, golf, etc.) ... just curious how other folks handle the onslaught this time of year (especially with shrinking budgets, staffs, pages, etc.)
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My area is small enough and not bugged that much by other papers that I think some type of game coverage is warranted, yet too big for me to keep a handle on everything myself ... some tuesdays (our biggest deadline period of the week, because we have two papers we're working on), we may have 20-30 events going on ... yikes ...

thanks, and yes I am thankful just to have a job right now...

 

Spring sports coaches are the worst. That is all.

 

Same boat.

I just take a deep breath, do the best I can, remind myself that it'll be over in a few weeks and I stop reading the comments section for a few weeks.

I'm supposed to be on a two-person staff, but we're short one right now (one of like 12 openings in the country, so it can't be too long now).

We theoretically "cover" an area that includes 13 high schools, but in reality we cover the main high school, the local christian school and the local community college. The outlying schools we just cover when for their area and regional basketball tournaments.

That left me with 60 hours of overtime (every single one clocked, though) and no days off for three weeks ending last Monday.

You just grit your teeth and bear it.

 

Agreed.

How do you survive it? Hope it rains every day.

Actually, know that no matter what you do, someone isn't going to be happy. So just plan accordingly, hit the most important events, and try to do what you can.

 

My sage advice, after years of dealing with that, is that there's absolutely nothing you can do but suck it up and plow through it the best you can.

Rainouts don't necessarily help, either, unless it rains so many days that games start to get canceled rather than rescheduled.

You're going to be buried most days, and it simply comes with the territory.

Helpful, huh?

 

We have soccer and golf in the fall here in Ohio.

It's just Baseball, Softball and Track here for me right now.

Track sucks though. Most of the coaches try to give us the results on the phone, which can take ungodly amounts of time.

 

Haven't seen the obvious advice posted yet, so ... drink heavily.

Seriously, springs sports season stinks. Cover as many of the big games as you can, and use things like features, Q&A's, prep notes packages, etc., to tie up the loose ends and try your best to keep everyone relatively happy. And be glad you don't have lacrosse.

 

Spring sports are the worst.
our roundups are massive (avg of about 40 or so inches each night, not including tennis, which always goes in agate) we try to do some features, shoot a variety of events and cover only really important games because we also have a D-2 university and juco that we cover in addition to 35 high schools. Throw in spring football and the rest of the crap that comes up and it really, really sucks.
and yes, spring coaches are the worst.
Last night --
Coach: suzy pitcher and mary pitcher combined on a one-hitter. Suzy got the win. she pitched the first four innings and mary pitched the last three. We scored in the bottom of the seventh to win. Best game I've seen in a while.
Me: I think Mary is the winning pitcher.
Coach: Why? suzy started and we won.
Me: Mary is the winning pitcher because she was the pitcher of record when you scored the winning run.
coach: I didn't know that.

 

I guess it's time for me to unleash the hounds.
What are your thoughts on indoor track? Mine is I believe it is glorified pre-season.
I was talking to the track coach at a local high school the other day and told him I would talk to him before his outdoor opener for a preview.
He said, "I don't agree with that. Indoor season is pretty important."
Bull.

 

High school? Kansas doesn't have high school indoor track but the jucos do. However, no one has a facility that's even good for practice, much less competition, so they always have to go and compete in meets sponsored by NCAA Division I and II schools. The coach sends me nothing until they get to the nationals (which, by the way, are this weekend).

Since the juco program doesn't ever seem to have more than six people and has never hosted a meet, indoors or outdoors, I don't consider it of great importance. Since the town doesn't seem to care much for the juco other than football, no one seems to miss it.

 

I'm the first person to say that different newspapers have different realities.

There is ONE thing I believe to be universal. And that is that you're doing your readers no favors with 35-45 inch roundups. If you can't break that down to 20-22 inches, you're trying to get too much in and something more important is going to suffer as a result.

 

As a guy who was among the state's best on tight indoor tracks, but then become not quite so much when I weighed 115 pounds and we moved into the wind outdoors, I'm afraid I am not comfortable with your assessment.

My time in the mile on a 12-laps-to-the-mile indoor track was within a second of my best outdoor time in high school. So of COURSE it mattered.