Middle school sports

[Cadet]

I run middle school and other subvarsity stuff in briefs.

But my newest task: train the middle school coaches to send me an email instead of an illegible fax.

 

[longjumper42]

If I don't die from the black lung, I'll make sure I tell you how my excursion is...

 

[statrat]

I am with bigpern on MS sports coverage. I work for a tiny tiny 4,000 daily and I swear I have every mother and father within 100 miles who's son/daughter filling up my inbox and vmail with how I just need to do a story on timmy/tommy/sally/... it drives me nuts... I am a ONE person sports desk... so along with just covering all varsity sports and doing my columns, etc. I literally don't have an hour of free time in my day to cover the MS. Yet they still expect me to do it.
My publisher also expects it because his kids play... I seriously want to shoot myself.... please.. if anyone has a gun send it my way.

I hear you. I take the photographs, design the pages, write the articles and a column, do my best to toss in a quick story on the middle schools or non-varsity teams when I have space and/or time. Got complaints from a mother about not covering middle school football because "they work so hard" and "its really important to them" blah blah blah. Went and covered the next game top to bottom. My lead photo was of her kid absolutely getting splattered on a block by the other team's fullback. Haven't heard a peep since...

 

[longjumper42]

[/quote]

My lead photo was of her kid absolutely getting splattered on a block by the other team's fullback.
[/quote]

Nice...maybe I should try that this weekend with the super awesome middle school bball game I have to go to.... just some lead art of a kid getting rocked in the face with the ball.. because as we all know... 9 out of 10 kids in MS can't catch a basketball.

 

[crusoes]

We've gone over this a lot in the past, but I hope you don't mind if I bring it up again. The other day I received a call and an e-mail telling me about the middle school boys soccer team that finished an undefeated season for the first time in several years and that it would be worthy of coverage.
I informed them that if they sent a press release I'd try to publish it, but I can't cover the team or write a story about it myself. I have my hands full just covering all the high school varsity teams, especially now during state tournaments and with a Thanksgiving Day football tab to put out. Also, if I wrote about one middle school team, I'd have to write about all of them, plus all the JV and freshman high school teams.
I guess they could counter that it was a truly exceptional season, but:
1). It seems to me with middle school and subvarsity teams, everybody who cares about what they did already knows
2). While it may be an undefeated middle school soccer team today, next week it might be a JV tetherball team that breaks .500 for the first time in two years or a freshman coed horseshoes team that snapped a three-game losing streak. I'm pretty sure with just about every one of these teams, somebody could make a case for why their kid's team should be covered and once you say yes to one of them, it becomes more difficult to say no to somebody else.
In "exceptional cases" would you write about a JV, freshman or middle school team?

Nope. Rule's a rule. But I would run a team photo with a short description. Then again, I'm at a small paper. But no stories. I got a call from a woman in one town upset that a team from another town got big play for winning..... a STATE CHAMPIONSHIP. You give one middle-school and JV team a story and that's all you'll do, and you're writing for 20 people, max, instead of the several thousand who get the paper and don't give two shakes of a stick for the martyrdom of hard work these oppressed glory-seeking parents want you to highlight.

 

[JBHawkEye]

We've gone over this a lot in the past, but I hope you don't mind if I bring it up again. The other day I received a call and an e-mail telling me about the middle school boys soccer team that finished an undefeated season for the first time in several years and that it would be worthy of coverage.
I informed them that if they sent a press release I'd try to publish it, but I can't cover the team or write a story about it myself. I have my hands full just covering all the high school varsity teams, especially now during state tournaments and with a Thanksgiving Day football tab to put out. Also, if I wrote about one middle school team, I'd have to write about all of them, plus all the JV and freshman high school teams.
I guess they could counter that it was a truly exceptional season, but:
1). It seems to me with middle school and subvarsity teams, everybody who cares about what they did already knows
2). While it may be an undefeated middle school soccer team today, next week it might be a JV tetherball team that breaks .500 for the first time in two years or a freshman coed horseshoes team that snapped a three-game losing streak. I'm pretty sure with just about every one of these teams, somebody could make a case for why their kid's team should be covered and once you say yes to one of them, it becomes more difficult to say no to somebody else.
In "exceptional cases" would you write about a JV, freshman or middle school team?

Nope. Rule's a rule. But I would run a team photo with a short description. Then again, I'm at a small paper. But no stories. I got a call from a woman in one town upset that a team from another town got big play for winning..... a STATE CHAMPIONSHIP. You give one middle-school and JV team a story and that's all you'll do, and you're writing for 20 people, max, instead of the several thousand who get the paper and don't give two shakes of a stick for the martyrdom of hard work these oppressed glory-seeking parents want you to highlight.

This is what we did last year. Main local HS' freshman team goes 9-0. Sophomore team goes 8-1. Varsity went 0-9. So we did a story on what the underclass success means for the future of the varsity program.

Outside of that, sophomores and freshmen get a few graphs in a roundup.