How's your high school football season going?

Attendance at UVA might be better since it is somewhat closer to the 6A/5A population base. Under the old setup in Virginia, 95 percent of the old Group AAA schools, which made up the old Division 6 and Division 5, were within 20 miles of I95 from DC to Petersburg and I-64 from Hampton Roads to Richmond.

One of the years that stands out was 2008 when the 4 finalists were Oscar Smith from Chesapeake, Phoebus from Hampton, Dinwiddie from the Petersburg area and one of the Manassas-area schools. All 4 were along that I-64/I-95 corridor, yet they had to travel 4 hours-plus to Blacksburg on a snowy weekend.

 

We're down to six teams, with one head-to-head matchup on Friday that guarantees we'll have at last one team playing for a state championship.

 

Actually, I think its sort of interesting to compare how different states association and media handle things. No better place than here to get a good cross-sampling of people.

 

And I started the thread thinking we'd get some deadline horror stories.

You never quite know how these things will evolve.

 

I suspect we all have those. When it comes to high school sports, is covering Wisconsin much different than Mississippi?

A friend of mine in another industry and I were discussing this. I mentioned that if I want hockey and other winter sports to be part of my routine, my realistic choices of where to work were naturally limited, but that everybody has high school football and basketball and, usually, a local college at some level. So, in that respect, job choices came down to where I was willing to live and what companies I was willing to work for.

 

My high school season was going great until this weekend.
I run the state's Top 20 poll (the first and only) and my name was passed on to someone from USA Today to put together the all-state team for RI. After years of saying how easy it would be to do that, I am a changed man.
I talked to 18 coaches (we have 44 teams) and a handful of media members about possible choices, if they thought Player A was better than Player B, and after all that, got the team nailed down. I want to go back and make changes, but I'm sticking to it.
I am thankful for my previous working relationships with some coaches. It made narrowing down the players much easier, especially when one goes "You don't want any guys from this division. They all suck."

 

Basketball, right?

 

Wow, that was better than mine. Stanford and Oregon play in men's and women's basketball on the same day. Stanford wins the women's game and Oregon wins the men's game.... by the exact same scores. Had me doing a double-take as I was editing the agate.

 

It's state championship week, and this year that means three trips to Jackson for me this week. Monday is the annual press conference with all of the teams, Friday we have two games and Saturday we have one.

Had toyed with the idea of going to Biloxi on Sunday for the national juco championship game, just to see if East Mississippi was as good as everybody says they are, but I suspect I'll be burned out on making a third 90-minute-plus drive in three days.

BTW, HH, seeing as how you guys have five teams, how many writers are you sending down Friday and Saturday?

 

Anyone here willing to critique one of my packages? I interned this semester at a Hearst newspaper and wanted to hear some addition feedback.