Dear dimwit on the phone

A little different in soccer...since they actually track "saves" and "shots" as two different stats that do not always equate each other.
You often can see, for example, 14 shots, yet only 5 shots on goal.

 

I started using this formula for lacrosse, and I'm going to move it over and use it for hockey and soccer starting next season.

On the shot line of my notebook I register all shots on cage with an X, all shots the ring the post, go wide, or are blocked with a O, and all goals with a check mark.

 

I'm definitely not a soccer expert, but I do enjoy covering the sport and feel I've gotten a decent grasp on it over the last 5 years.
For soccer I will track shots and shots on goals. I don't know that many reporters around here do so; at least I haven't seen it show up in their articles.
For me, a shot is all about intent. A long through ball or a cross from the corner that the keeper comes out to get is not a shot. A free kick where the player's only intent is clearly scoring a goal is obviously a shot.
They way I had it explained to me is, a shot on goal is a shot that is either a goal or the keeper either has to save it from going into the net. I will give credit for a SOG and a team save if a defender steps in front of a shot and deflects it away. Not sure if that's right or wrong (probably wrong).
It's not uncommon for me to report a team had 23 shots and 12 shots on goal. If it was a 5-0 score, the losing goalkeeper had seven saves.
Saves and goals should always add up to shots on goal.
I also agree on corner kicks as a telltale state, although it's not always true. If a team has 8 corner kicks to 1 or 2 from the other team, I'd feel pretty safe saying it was a blowout.

 

Who did the headline reference though?

 

Danica's finish was the AP's Monday lead off a Saturday night race that ended pretty late.
I either ran some version of the AP's 2 a.m final writethru or an MCT story, I forget.

 

I feel like this also can make it difficult to run reliable HS leaderboards, because, at least at our small paper, we rely on the teams to send us their stats. Does the kid really have 30 stolen bases through 15 games, or is he getting credit for a catcher's indifference on some...

 

We ran the AP lede, sort of as a Notebook piece (like HejiraHenry said...the race was late Saturday, so running a true "gamer" for a Monday morning paper is too late IMO). Sunday's paper we ran a plugger with a topper pointing to the web for a result story.
The point that made me laugh is the guy telling us to tell "our" writer something.
It just blows my mind that some people actually think that every paper in the country sends a reporter to cover every event in the county.

 

What I was trying to ask, though, was did your writer write the headline or did you just use the default AP headline?

 

At least in Rhode Island, I'm not sure if anyone really runs leaderboards. One of the past papers I was at would keep track of stats internally, so that they'd know if a player was in the ballpark for 1,000 points, for example, but we were told to not rely heavily on these stats for gamers or previews or wrap-ups. Obviously, some stats are pretty clear cut - A kid either scores a touchdown, or he doesn't. But anything with a small amount of judgement, we found it would normally skew toward the home team dramatically (stolen bases, kills in volleyball, saves in various sports, etc.).

 

It is problematic in many cases. I try to just stick to the major categories in running leaderboards. When you get into the other stuff, you run into too many of the problems you talked about. Worst case scenario: someone sees one player with outrageous numbers and starts padding their own player's stats in an effort to keep pace.

 

For the most part I agree where soccer is concerned. The big difference to me is I count shots on goal if they hit off the posts or the crossbar, because to me that's still the definition of "on-goal." So in my book, SOGs and saves don't necessarily have to add up. And, yes, corners are a good way to chart which team is dominating play.

 

Corners aren't always a tell-tale stat, though. I've seen sequences where a team can get two or three in a row. Corner comes in, ball gets deflected out, another corner follows. Corner comes back in, ball deflects out again, and then another. And so on.

As for through balls on goal, I only count them as shots if the keeper clearly is preventing them from going into the goal. If it's slowing to a stop at the top of the box, or the keeper is just coming out to break up the formation of a play, then no. If no one is around and the ball has some zip on it as it's heading straight on goal, and the keeper stops it five yards out? That's a shot and a save to me, whether the intent was there or not.