Covering youth sports

You say youth, but what level of youth sports? JV, middle school, younger? If all of the above, finding a story a week shouldn't be that difficult.

 

Is that because it's youth sports, or because the writers don't give a damn about what they're writing and it shows through in the copy?

 

Below varsity high school level. Nobody who doesn't have a kid on the team gives a damn about it and if they keep picking up the paper week after week and finding it jam packed with crap they don't care about, they're going to quit picking up the paper.

 

My impression is, it's anything below high school. So it includes a lot. Again, my problem isn't necessarily making a conscious effort to do a few more of these. Hell, come summer I'll write about damn near anything to fill a section.
I'm talking through this as this thread evolves, so forgive me if my posts ramble or even seem illogical. Some of it is coming to me the more I think it through. I really have two main philosophical problems with it:

1) It's a quota -- and a big one at that, considering the space and staffing limitations we have, and the expectations already on us that aren't likely to slacken up.
Quotas suck.
Any time you're chasing a quota like this, it makes you frantic. Instead of worrying about finding something of quality, you're just pumping out whatever crap you can find to satisfy the quota. And as soon as it's done, you start chasing the next one because it's due two days later. It leads to slapdash work, stories you'd never fathom running making it into print, and your other stories suffer because before long everything else you cover becomes secondary to making sure you meet the quota.

2) Putting this stuff in the paper also means we're a step closer to becoming nothing more than the Kiddie Sports Gazette.
I was basically told yesterday when this edict was handed down that it means college sports (which we get from AP or other sources, since the state colleges are all a few hours away) get pushed aside or banished from our pages in favor of this stuff under the logic that local > anything else. Never mind that we have some pretty large fan bases here that make those AP stories as good as a local one. We're getting close to a time when we have to justify running any of that stuff.

We're getting sidetracked here, though. I could rant about this all week, but it won't do any good other than working myself into a tizzy.

 

Lots of good advice here, and I know what you're up against, Batman. "Names, names, names ... faces, faces, faces" is publisher-speak for trying to boost circulation without spending any more money.

We do a weekly youth sports roundup, for which they added two pages to our usual four-page sports section. It runs every Wednesday, and the local youth sports coaches, parents, etc. know they have to submit everything by Monday afternoon. We also include the city park district's grade school, junior high and high school rec league results that LTL was talking about from his youth.

Only "real coverage" I can think of is when the three local travel soccer leagues combine their efforts to run a huge regional tourney. We put a feature story on A1 and run a special section with brackets, schedules (and occasionally, ads!) on the Friday the tournament begins.

 

Is there a day/days where your local content is limited because of a lack of games the previous night? Those would be the best days to run such a story. Since local content is limited, you're probably going deeper in the wire to find stuff to run. If that's the case, Kiddie Sports Gazette or not, would still be better to run something local than AP content from another state.

 

Nobody, huh? Have you conducted a poll in your coverage area to come to that conclusion?

 

Not a good idea for a daily to cover youth sports like a regular beat — not at the expense of not covering varsity high school sports. The middle school basketball star will have his chance when he's in high school. Put in a brief and be done with it. Maybe youth sports roundup.

 

My shop used to cover youth sports a lot more than we do now, thanks to shrinking staff and dwindling newshole. We'll do a youth sports feature if warranted, and in mid-summer, we cover some youth baseball tournaments (state level and above only).

As has been stated above, most of the time you have trouble getting five words out of a kid you're trying to interview, but sometimes they'll surprise you. I once did a feature on a 9-year-old golf whiz who was among the best in the nation in his age group. A couple of times he had to look to his folks for an answer, but for the most part he was remarkably articulate about the game and what he was doing. He's a senior in high school now and headed for a D-1 program, then probably the PGA Tour after that.

 

Been at one paper that tried to cover some of everything with a focus on preps

 

Agree. I also believe the laziness of staffs and the lack of wanting to pursue stories leaves a lot of solid stories on the table.
It's easy going to a high school game. Not as easy to go dig for a story in an area that you have no interest in.

 

You think it's good for business to run everything that people already know the answer to and know the story? Enjoy yourself....