Club youth sports teams: Why should anybody other than parents GAF?

And therefore, why should we cover them?

A pertinent question as more calls and emails start to come in all hot and bothered because summer AAU basketball and 7-on-7 football isn't getting covered.

Go to any of these events, the ONLY people in the stands are parents, siblings, bfs/gfs, and coaches of opposing teams scouting.

Nobody (0) else, ever.

 

I agree....but...

Aren't all those people in the stands people that could buy your paper?

 

Starman, where do you think the kids learn their sense of entitlement?

 

Around here, 7 on 7 is all high school teams playing together so its relevant to the high school reader. There are two big tourneys here every summer and we cover them as events....more why do you do this, what do you learn spotlight pieces. We don't cover the games themselves as game stories, and we've had good feedback.

As for AAU, unless its one of the huge national tourneys that draws tons of college coaches it seems kind of pointless.

 

Obviously SOME people care though.

 

I'm one of those former sports journalists now, but I'm a current subscriber to a 6-day, 15K paper.

I swear the last three weeks have been nothing but youth baseball/softball. All ages. Always pictures. Always shitty youth league coach quotes from what I've skimmed.

I've barely even glanced at the sports front the past few days. My father, who has become one of those off my lawn letter to the editor type people, just throws his arms up as a subscriber to the same paper. Talked to him the other day and his exact quote was, "does anyone give a fuck about 10-year-old girls playing softball?"

Yes. Probably about 50 people care about that team.

Feel somewhat bad for the guy covering all those things because he's busting his ass traveling all over the state watching those games, but also can't help shaking my head and wondering if there's anything better out there.

I swore when I left journalism and went into teaching/coaching I'd never be "that guy" and bitch to the paper about coverage. I've politely suggested stories, but even have felt odd about that as if I was overstepping my bounds (so I'll passively bitch about it on an industry message board).

But to answer the initial question of the thread succinctly: no.

 

Youth baseball has been the driving force here the last few weeks. The city hosted the district tournament and will wrap up the regional tournament tomorrow.

We haven't covered every game, but it's been front and center for two weeks now.

 

Yeah, but do you think people give a fuck?

 

Nobody does besides family. But in small towns, family adds up to a pretty big percentage of your readership pretty fast.

 

Did some time at a weekly recently designing pages and failed to convince the burnout who was doing sports there that his section should be for sports fans not sports parents. He mostly wrote about youth sports and it was a waste of space.

 

They shouldn't.

That's 100 copies.

Yay!

 

100 copies is a lot more than your day-old wire story about the local MLB team sells.