When you were in high school ...

Neither did I. Not for preps, anyway. I'd read the sports for the box scores and the game stories.

 

I was definitely a junkie for this kind of stuff in high school. Read every single capsule every day; not just our schools' caps, but every schools' caps. We were a tiny high school in BFE and knew we weren't ever getting any coverage greater than capsules and box scores, which I understood.

The only thing that I complained about was the misspelling of names... and that one time I wrote a pretty mean e-mail to the high schools guy for putting a team into the state basketball tournament that hadn't yet earned the spot (that team had yet to win a play-in game scheduled for the next day -- not-so-coincidentally against my team).

The guy on the other end of that mean e-mail later hired me at the same paper. Now I'm the one writing the caps and receiving the complaints from punk high-school kids.

 

With a serious attack of senior-itis, I dropped a very taxing Biography class. The two electives available for that period were Home Ec and Journalism. I got into Journalism. My high school was the largest and most prominent of those covered by the local paper. I'd cover the games for school paper and it turned out that I knew more about what was going on than the professional writer. I'd read the game stories and tell my dad, "That isn't the same game I saw. My story is better than that guy's." A year later, when I started college, I became a stringer for that paper ... and it led me to all the misery we're experiencing now.

 

Same here.

I began writing for the hometown weekly when I was a high school sophomore, writing articles about the baseball team (I was the scorekeeper and rarely used reserve). By my senior year I was covering my high school and six smaller schools in neighboring communities.

The only thing I didn't cover was my high school's football team, and that's because I was starting. I gave up baseball after my junior season. But I did cover some football, the local private school that played home games on Thursdays.

I think my coverage was fair, because the coaches from those schools told me so. I maintained contact with the coaches and players from my high school years after I began covering sports for the regional daily - the same paper I've been with for almost 23 years.

But Faithless was not all work, no play in high school. I did my share of partying when I wasn't working or studying.

Now, as for the regional daily's sports coverage when I was in high school, I thought it did a good job of covering the preps. But there were times when I thought it went overboard with its coverage of the mega high school in its city. Then again, I heard the same complaint years later when I was on the preps beat for the daily. But I would reach back to my weekly days in high school to give the other schools - especially those in the same county as Mega High - some attention in prep coverage. Being fair to those schools has paid off for me now that I'm on the community news beat and working with the same schools and communities.

 

I was an OK high school athlete, never got my name in the paper.
My brother was All-State, only got his name in once and that was when he was named All-State.
In college, I blossomed and was All-Conference my senior year after walking on, never got my name mentioned in my hometown paper.

My parents never called the newspaper to complain. And, for that alone, I'll love them forever.

 

Shoulda gone with home ec.

 

I read the paper every mroning before school. Front to back - starting with sports of course.
I skipped right past the prep stuff. Could NOT have cared less about it.
Never even paid attention.

 

I played football at one of the big-time Bay Area high schools (Not De La Salle) and we never went a single game without having at least one of the major papers there covering us.

By talking to the preps editor at one of them, I got my first job in the business taking prep calls and doing prep agate, which led to my first byline a few months later.

So, I guess I have that asshole to blame. ;D

 

SoCal, it just goes to prove that you should be careful what you wish for -- you might get it.

In my high school days, we were a small private school on the fringe of a big metro area. We got into the metro daily for the area preview and a paragraph in a weekly roundup, win or lose, in football.

But we were a powerhouse in basketball and hockey and often was the lede in the private roundup. Thought that was eminently fair.
The local weekly covered us, badly, after they were done reporting on what the freshman and JV teams at the local HS had done.

 

Nope. We were a covered by a paper that covered two cities. The big city had four D-1 schools the highest in the state, including the catholic powerhouse.

Our city had one d-2 (us) and two downtrodden d-3 schools that also never got covered.

We rarely got covered and when we did it would be at the newspaper sponsored events. One time, we won the newspaper-sponsored 7-team XC invite beating all four division-1 schools. We got booed as were accepting our trophy.

 

The big-city metro covered us well. I never had my name in, because I played offensive tackle and guard. I don't remember being bothered when our game wasn't covered.

I do remember thinking the in-town weekly should have done more on the handful of us that played for the magnet school in the big city. I knew then that he was incompetent, so I wasn't exactly surprised.

 

Well, we were the only school our weekly paper covered, and they did a fine job.,

The big-city paper also did a good job. We had some really good teams and we got lots of love from the paper and TV. I'm sure parents hated the coverage though.

(I have Glory Days playing in my head for some reason).