Dear dimwit on the phone

"You only write about us when we can't hit the ball through the windmill."

 

That's where my problem lies. I'll have no problem doing a feature on it when the time arises and I've done a few on niche sports in the past, but give them a yard and they want a mile. They start demanding coverage when staff, space and reader interest constraints do not warrant it.

 

The problem I have with covering cheerleaders is when one team wins a "National Championship" when really it's just a bunch of random schools from across the region to do a competition, and they want some full-blown commemorative front page issue or something.

Our state recognizes cheering as a sport, and awards a state champion. We cover this if one of our teams wins.

 

How is that different than just about any sports nowadays?

I swear, at least once a week I get an email to the extent of "Great news! The Podunk U13 Subsection B, Team 2 Thrasers won the 1st annual Stop & Shop Store #733 Produce Aisle Commemorative Girls Lacrosse for children under 13 national championship!!!!!! The Thrashers beat two teams in dramatic come-from-behind 1-0 wins and played like a team and are all friends!!!!! If you want to do a story, contact me because the girls worked really hard and deserve recgonition!"

 

True.

 

Thank G-d for that! I've never said cheerleading is not athletic, but it's not a recognized, interscholastic sport until our state athletic association says so.

Of course, our sister paper sent a (non-sports) reporter and photographer to a national cheerleading competition at Disney World a couple of months ago. I don't think any of it appeared in the paper, which makes me ponder whether we just produced galleries of kiddy porn.

 

That is why God created the Features Section.

 

They PAID for a staffer to go to DISNEYWORLD and DID NOT run anything? Holy Jesus.

 

I laughed much harder at that than I should have. We should just start referring to prep sports as the friendship beat since that's all people who pitch stories want to read about.

 

Our governing body is called Athletics and Activities...so I choose to toss cheerleading/band/etc. onto the activities side...schools page. Works for us. Never more than a brief really anyway. The way I see it you can either cheer for sports or you can play sports...I'll cover the ones who play.

 

Regardless of what side of the aisle you fall when it comes to cheerleading, I find it interesting that some papers allow the state association to dictate to them what is a sport and what isn't. Do you also let the city council tell you what is news and what isn't?

 

I think that band is one area that local papers/websites fail to cover that has a lot more devoted followers than almost every sport.