Dear dimwit on the phone

We have local tennis tournaments going on all the time, and if it's a big enough tournament ("big" being subjective because if you're not playing in the tournament you wouldn't even know it existed) we'll run the main results. One time one of these tournament directors called in upset that we weren't running results from every division, like 70-year-old round robin and so forth. These are not small tournaments and if we ran everything from the first few days, we're talking like a 3/4 column of agate -- agate no one even cares about except the people who send them into us to have it published.

He tried to argue that he didn't know any of the names from all these professional ATP and WTA tournaments yet we run their agate, so therefore we would sell more papers by listing neighbor Bob's quarterfinal tennis results.

 

Should have pulled a Lyndon Johnson/J. Edgar Hoover and put another sophomore in the paper.

 

The mom who's upset that we named the kid who let a big hit roll between his legs. "Some of these kids will never play baseball again," she said. "Nor should they," was the response I had to choke back.

 

I know it's different for everyone depending on location, but we knew for a fact high school sports didn't sell more papers, even if our large school won a major championship like hoops or football. Our readers liked blood, death, and wildfires. JV or lower were never in consideration for coverage, even if we were the middle of nowhere. I should have had no complaints about my job, but I held myself to high standards.

 

I thought about that, and it would have been an easy switch because the kid's teammate was second in the voting ...

 

Since we started naming all-county teams four years ago, we've had 60 athletes named players of the year. There were some co-POYs, and we've had one multi-sport winner (water polo/swimming), but for purposes of this thread, I'm counting each athlete only once.

Of those, 16 got athletic scholarships at four-year schools, or, a little less than one-third.

 

Our all-area boys player of the year is a borderline D-I prospect. No one else on the boys or girls team is seeing D-I basketball unless they buy a ticket and one of our girls first-teamers is heading for an NAIA school.
That didn't stop one coach from complaining that his good, but one dimensional guard was a better choice for POY than the D-I kid.

 

I once had a swimming mom - whose husband was school board president at the time - tell me her daughter wanted to quit the sport because she wasn't on our all-area team. I told her that if that was her daughter's motivation to compete, her priorities were wrong. At the time, her team was light years better than the others, so it got far more swimmers on the team. I'm willing to bet it was an entitlement issue because the school's in a rich 'hood.

 

Our girls' POY is a D-1 kid (Western Kentucky), girls' sophomore of the year is a guaranteed lock for D-1 (barring major injury, obviously) with UConn, Kentucky, Louisville and a slew of others recruiting her.

The boys winners? NAIA or JUCO players.

 

We bring each sport's players of the year in for a group photo every season. So far, even with the rise of social media, I haven't heard of any news being "broken" ahead of time.

The complaint calls, when they come, are usually from parents. A few years ago we picked a young lady on our track team in the 100, 200 and 400. We pick one team, no second team, no honorable mention. A mommy called me to bitch on year, saying we should limit kids to one spot on the team so more people could recognized. I explained that we set up the teams to honor the best of the best, not to spread the wealth. Didn't sit well, but I was reminded of that conversation when the lady we picked ran in the 2012 London Olympics.

 

I don't disagree with you. However, we (used to) get a report when people say they're canceling their subscriptions for a sports-related reason -- and the lack of coverage of a certain sport and/or school was what most said. We did an in-house survey maybe five years ago, and sports parents said they drop our small community paper when their kid's not in season, or, more often, when their kids are through with high school.

Years ago, I told The New York Times' subscription service I was canceling because of the lack of Major League Soccer coverage. That was a very small part of my reason, but I hoped The Times generated similar reports.

 

We all get these, but here's one cut from an email this morning. I really can't imagine college coaches are picking up copies of our paper to blaze their recruiting trail. I should point out this parent/coach has been extremely helpful with getting results to us to publish. Just pointing out that mindset that is out there among some.

"Did I miss last weeks results? or did I get you the info to late?? The more the paper writes up about all the kids, the better there chances are to get noticed by colleges."