Dear dimwit on the phone

I've got better things to do than track down every coach in the county every night. They know where to find me. We're in the phone book and on that newfangled Internet thingy. There's too many schools to call everyone every night and maintain an 8-hour work day.

The ones that don't call that play one of our main schools? I interview them, give them a firm handshake and slip them my card. Mama or Papa Schlitzkicker call in and wonder why little Johnny's games aren't in, I tell them exactly why and that they do have my card. Do Mama and Papa take my advice and complain to the coach? Generally not, since they're convinced it's a conspiracy theory against their kid and school anyway ... or that I have a kid at their rival school.

 

What I've found sometimes is to tell parents we do have a bias against some teams based on the way we interact with coaches and their athletic departments. When a coach calls in a loss well before deadline, has all the stats ready -- or at least makes an effort to get you relevant stats -- and passes the phone to players when he/she can, we remember that. Maybe we don't think it explicitly, but when you're working with a cooperative coach, it's easier to pick up details, trends and relevance ("Hey, isn't this your first shutout all year?"). Not to mention, when we're going to run a feature on some kid, we lean toward the ones we know more about already.

I've told that to two parents, they called the coach.

 

At Podunk, we have about a half dozen schools, so I'll give a courtesy call to the coaches who will work with us in most sports. Now, during the fall when we have 30-40 things going on at night, I have a tiered system. Football and volleyball, which is popular in our area, get called. After that, the coaches who usually call in but maybe slipped up and forgot once I'll give a courtesy call to. For the rest, call it in or it isn't in.

 

I do something similar. We put most of our effort into covering the three largest schools in our circulation area, but I always keep tabs on the oulying schools as well ... which are calling in, win or lose, are having good seasons, ect. When the opportunity arises, I'll sent out a photog and, if all the planets line up right, staff it. I know they apprreciate it more than some of those parents in our big schools who seem to think of photos as a right.

 

One other thing I used to do is to give the outlying schools and the teams that usually stunk some coverage at the beginning of the season, not only to try to get the coaches to call in, but also to get them out of the way in case someone complained.

And for those who would complain why I wasn't covering every single game by the undefeated big school team, I'd point out that they were going deep in the playoffs and were going to be getting plenty of coverage anyways, so why not give the little schools their due for a couple of early games?

 

It's been a while but I feel I've got to revive this thread.

Ahem ...

Dear parent who just emailed me the 11,234,543th picture of a group of kids sitting together with trophies,

I would like to explain something to you and, really, to all soccer moms and dads out there.

Just because your kid is on a team that beat three other crappy teams in a crappy tournament that no one cares about does not, I repeat, does not make your kid's team a "state champion". Being a "state champion" implies that your son or daughter has beat an entire state not two scrubs teams and one moderately mediocre one.

So, please, next time you email me a photo of your son or daughter's crappy U16 Southseaside mariner team 1, division III squad, don't try to give it more importance than it deserves.

If I run the photo, it's because I need it to fill space. That's all. That's all it will ever be.

Oh, and by the way, soccer blows.

Smooches,

Schieza Inc.

 

I agree with all of that until you said soccer blows.

 

Dear U14 baseball coach,

We are not going to publish a photo of your team for going to an out-of-state national tournament and plug everyone who gave two cents to allow you to go. If we are going to run your photo, it is going to be about what the team has accomplished, not who has sponsored it. And you should have thought about running it by me before telling your sponsors that you'd get their name in the paper in exchange for sponsorship. I control the content of the sports page, not you. Now you can go to the advertising department and take out an ad.

Sincerely,
JF

 

Along similar lines, can someone please put a halt to these "national cheerleading championships" before they get out of control? Oh, wait, too late.

There must be at least five events each spring touting themselves as national championships , which makes it awkward when local team A wins the trophy one week and gets the big write-up, only to have local team B come home with its own championship trophy two weeks later and (somewhat understandably) want the same treatment from the paper.

I also found it amusing that one of the local cheerleading squads was a no-show when the boys basketball team was playing at regionals a few years ago. They were at "nationals" in Florida instead even though they didn't win any of the major local events in the preceding three months.

 

It always does my heart good when I see this thread pop up on the front page.

 

Even better, coach, sit down and write out thank you letters yourself! In a tough economy, the personal touch might make a difference if a sponsor is unsure if they'll re-up.

 

And don't try to get around it by submitting a letter to the editor thanking the sponsors, with mentions of 36 businesses. We're going to tell you, again, to buy an ad.