Overheard in the press box

Western Pennsylvania has an entire sports network devoted to high school sports.

msasports.net

They do an excellent job of not only broadcasting games - football, basketball, baseball, softball, you name it - but also keeping an active site with playoff brackets, standings, playoff qualification requirements, schedules, and more. Their broadcasts, while under the MSA umbrella, are broadcast on various AM and FM stations across the region. It's pretty impressive.

 

When I was first starting out about five years ago I was assigned to cover one of our local football teams state playoff games. It was against a school outside our coverage area, but one still close enough to where people had least heard of our paper. I did all the right stuff. Called the coach, made arrangements, so on and so forth. I was nervous because it was my first playoff game and I was sending in from the road for the first time. Lots of moving parts going on.

I get to the high school and make my was up to press box. I'm immediately greeted by a women in her 50s or 60s. She proceeds to tell me that the press box is only for those working the game. The box wasn't huge, but was big enough to hold both home and away radio, coaches for each team, PA announcer and still have a box or two left over. I explain who I am, show her my pass. She then tells me that the press box isn't for the press. Stupidly I ask why the radio guy was allowed in but not me. She tells me radio isn't press. By this point my head was spinning and a little angry.

In my haste I said rather loudly, "Then why the hell do they call it a press box if it isn't for the press." Several heard and I was asked to go sit in the stands. Normally it would not have been a big deal, but I needed one of the phone lines in the press box to send in.

I eventually went to the stands and asked the home coach after the game if he had a phone line I could use and story was sent in on time. I told my editor about the ordeal when I got back and asked if I needed to call and apologize for saying what I had said. He told me to never apologize for going to the area designated for me to be in and if it should happen again to call him and he would talk with the person personally.

It at least made me feel better. I was a 21 year old and nervous as could be and I think he knew that. I knew what I did was wrong and I was just glad he didn't yell at me like he probably should have.

 

It's one thing to get to a game and find there just isn't room in a press box but another all together to be told a print reporter isn't allowed in it. I would have spit hot tar in her face like that dinosaur did to Newman in Jurassic Park.

 

You forgot about the hangers-on.... can't have a high school press box without them.

 

I have heard this story probably 100 times.

 

I am going to be covering a first-round playoff game in my coverage area Saturday in the state's smallest 11-man classification that will be broadcast on four different stations that I can pick up in my car. It still boggles my mind, but when you're 500 miles from almost all of the professional sports world and the only university in town is locked up tight to one school, you fight for as much of the scraps as you can. And up here, you can sell ads on high school sports.

 

No room at the inn situation tonight.

Covering regular season finale between defending two popular and very good teams. Met for the district title in one of the classifications last year. It's also a Thursday night TV game.

I know it's going to be busy, so I allow extra, extra time to get there and get situated. I walk up to the press box almost an hour and a half before the game starts, walk in, and am met with a person waving his arms saying, "No! No! Absolutely not! No more!"

The TV people have commandeered the entire press box. I say, "You've got to be kidding me." Arm-waver who works for the host high school says, "Sorry, we're all the way down here as it is." I stand around for a few minutes, take in the sight of the TV crew's crap spread all over the workspace, taking up all sorts of room that could be better utilized to allow us fine newspaper folks to claim a little corner.

Three of us ended up in the bleachers on a windy cold night with no power, no place to set anything up or spread anything out.

 

Well, since I walk the sidelines anyway ...

Sorry, couldn't resist.

 

I help out with our prep coverage on Friday night (main beat is a BCS college team). For 10 weeks this year, I've been told there was no room for press in a press box three times (once very rudely), been hustled out of a press box to file in my car on deadline by a janitor twice, been locked in a stadium and forced to shimmy under the gate, had my laptop battery drain on me and die twice, and trip and fall over an obstacle going back to my car because all the lights had been turned off before I left the stadium.
I am going on the road for my college game this week, and I have never been so happy to have a Friday night off in my life.
I really, really don't think people appreciate the struggles prep writers go through. I couldn't do it on a daily basis.

 

This all reminds me how much I enjoy feature writing.

 

High school games sell ads at a lot of stations.

Plus, a lot of times ther local announcer just wants to go and do them.

I think you are really underestimating the interest in high school football an the number of people who cannot get to the game, especially if it is on the road.

 

Unrelated, but when I am covering an AHL game tonight, I will have my computer on the Internet and the radio feed in my ear. It helps a lot, because honestly these guys are better than I am at seeing what's happening, especially in front of the net.

The only disconcerting part is that its' a delay of three seconds or so. Kinda odd.