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12 year old girls softball world series on ESPN

Discussion in 'Anything goes' started by poindexter, Aug 15, 2007.

  1. DanOregon

    DanOregon Well-Known Member

    Why do I see a day when newspapers host a "newspaper camp" for kids to write stories and take pictures so they can get their name in the paper?
     
  2. mike311gd

    mike311gd Active Member

    My old paper did something like that. Not exactly a camp, but a meeting to set up a plan of attack for what would be this season; telling the coaches how to report scores and send in pictures. I was more than happy to work the desk that night.
     
  3. Inky_Wretch

    Inky_Wretch Well-Known Member

    I've had that discussion before.

    I was a pretty good athlete growing up. Not once did my parents ever call the newspaper wanting a story done on me when I made the local all-star baseball team. My younger brother was an outstanding football player. As a center, the only time his name was in the paper was when he recovered a fumble and then again when he was named to the all-state team.

    So why do parents now think every team deserves a story about it? What's changed in the past 30 years to make parents act this way?
     
  4. 93Devil

    93Devil Well-Known Member

    About the "National Champions" a few posts up...

    How many fucking U-12 girls national and state champions does AAU have? They make boxing look consolidated.

    Just because you beat another group of little shits from across the state does not make you a champion. How the fuck can you be a state champion in a two-day tournament?

    I would rather shave Rosie's ass than have anything to do with AAU. That includes cover, coach, ref, hit the brakes when they are front of me. God, do I hate those fucks.

    And thanks for fucking up USA basketball while we are at it.
     
  5. mike311gd

    mike311gd Active Member

    I once got an e-mail asking why I didn't write anything about his son, the long-snapper from a visiting college, in my gamer; the kid was a local guy. The dude's team won something like 55-3. What was I going to write: Joe Blow didn't throw any of his two snaps away?

    I didn't respond to him.
     
  6. KYSportsWriter

    KYSportsWriter Well-Known Member

    This reminds me of the summer I've had.

    I had to write an article on a 6-year-old all-star softball team who was supposedly the first team from this league to go to nationals. Well, that wasn't the case as there are TONS and TONS of "national" tournaments each summer and this league sends at least 5 teams to "national" tournaments each summer.

    Then there's this traveling softball team that turned in a photo every fucking week after a tournament. One of the parents actually came to the office one day -- the people let him come upstairs to the sports desk -- and asked me if I would do a story on them. I told him I'd think about it, but nothing ever came of it.

    Not to mention the other 50 or so youth baseball/softball teams that sent in photos every fucking week for our outdoors/youth page.
     
  7. Precious Roy

    Precious Roy Active Member

    I just feel sorry for the guys at my former shop, about a week ago they were knee-deep in Babe Ruth softball World Series (not Little League) in the sweltering heat and the suffocating humidity. And there, you have to cover it like it means something, or there would be a riot.

    Shout out to you guys, you do a hell of a job.
     
  8. JBHawkEye

    JBHawkEye Well-Known Member

    Similar summer here.

    We had an ASA "national" tournament here (actually, it's a regional tournament, but ASA slaps the "national" tag on it so it gets the parents all excited). We covered it by doing features every day and running the scores list. That wasn't enough. One parent called up and bitched that we weren't writing gamers on every game. I told him that there were 20 games in one day, he said there should have been 20 stories because "you've got room, no one cares about those (major league) baseball (box scores) you run."

    We had another team playing in a "national" tournament for 12-under. They finished third. Coach wanted us to run a front page story (with team photo, of course), to point out how this team played more than 100 games this summer.

    We had one guy come in all excited because a kid he had coached a couple of years ago, who had moved to another town 300 miles away, was being featured in a Gatorade ad with some other kids (you could barely see the kid in the ad). "This kid's going to be the youngest player to ever play in the NBA," he said. Um, the NBA has an age limit. "Oh."

    There were the Little League all-star coaches who would call in when there teams would win in tournaments, but we would never hear a word when they would lose.

    I'm glad it's the fall season.
     
  9. farmerjerome

    farmerjerome Active Member

    Maybe it's because I write for a paper that covers this nonsense, but I have no problem with a little write-up on a team that wins a national title.

    Yeah, yeah, yeah we're all high-and-mighty journalists and have "real" things to write about, but I would rather do a quick feature on this team than bang my head against the computer screen waiting for coaches to call back for the gymnastics preview.
     
  10. shotglass

    shotglass Guest

    I shall think of you from my cozy seat behind home plate at Lamade Stadium next Thursday.

    OK, maybe not.
     
  11. KYSportsWriter

    KYSportsWriter Well-Known Member

    We had one of those in Bowling Green, but the thing of it is there were no fucking teams west of the Mississippi in the damn thing. Go figure, eh?

    The teams that played in this "national" tournament turned in photos and of course asked for a story because they were the first team in their league to go to said tournament, but we just slapped them on the youth page and was done with it.

    Not softball, but we had a soccer team turn in a photo after playing in a couple of tournaments. They gave us placings of three of those tournaments and wanted us to say they competed in the last one. I e-mailed the parent who sent in the photo asking for placement in that tournament and the guy comes back with "placing in the tennessee tournament is irrelevant."

    Complete and utter bullshit, but we still ran the photo anyway.
     
  12. Smallpotatoes

    Smallpotatoes Well-Known Member

    In my local hometown weekly, there was a team photo of a youth soccer team and one of the kids in the front row was flashing what appeared to be a gang sign.
     
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