All-in format has parents up in arms

I'm just glad I didn't get calls about some small school making a regional tournament of the first time in several years. Making regionals, though, is about placing at least fourth out of seven schools.

 

Our state is the same way for basketball, and some districts have a baseball tournament. I don't have a real problem with it in those sports, since there is a tradition of being able to play your way in by winning the conference tournament.
When it sucks is when you have a powerhouse team that plays in a tough district that loses in the first round of the district tournament, and now their season is over.
Girls basketball last year, the district with a couple of our locals had four teams that were all something like 17-5. Only one in the state where all four teams had a winning record -- and two of them were finished right off the bat.
A few years back, there was a boys team in another district that went 27-0 in the regular season. They stumbled in the first round of the district tournament and finished 27-1.

 

Why do I get the feeling these are the same parents who would call and complain that you're "picking on their kids" when you covered the inevitable 52-0 first-round beatdown?
And just out to clarify, was it the parent who called you lazy and disinterested, or your editor and publisher? If I'd been to five events in a single day and heard that from the bosses, it would have taken a lot of strength for me not to leave a trail of bodies on my way out the door.

 

Tomato cans? How old are you, 92?

 

Parents are morons. Always remember that. You have to establish a policy, stick to it, and remember you can only do what you can do. You can't cover games with bodies that don't exist.

 

If loving arcane Depression-era turns of phrase is right, then I don't wanna go wrong.

 

Really. Palookas is a much better term these days.

 

Dear Parents:

Shut. The. Fuck. Up.

Sincerely,

Every prep writer everywhere.

 

The arrogance on here is stunning, though not entirely surprising.
If the state calls it a playoff game, you must too.
If it's a milestone, recognize it as such. Your "take" on their accomplishment is immaterial.
If I were your editor, we'd be having a serious talk about professionalism right about now.
Two parting thoughts and I'll leave you to continue bitching about the world:
1. Parents are customers, even the moronic ones.
2. Almost all of us started as prep writers at small papers, performing myriad tasks we deemed beneath us. You do your job, do it well and hope somebody notices the talent, the hustle, the teamwork, the right attitude and maybe you move up.

 

True, but if you have limited resources, and you have to choose between covering a playoff game between a 10-0 team and 9-1 team, or one between a 6-4 team and a 1-9 team, and a parent of the 1-9 team can't understand why you didn't send a staff reporter to his/her game, there's little hope for the sanity of said parent.

 

How often do you see the official name of the NASCAR Sprint Cup race mentioned in the AP preview/recap?

And in Kentucky, the high school football playoffs are officially called the Class XA KHSAA Commonwealth Gridiron Bowl (X runs 1-6). That's not the final, that's for each round 1-final. No daily paper in the state calls it that that I can think of. We each call them the xx round of the playoffs.

 

Why? Because they don't see things as we do? Of course they're going to advocate on behalf of their kid. It's what parents do. That doesn't make them right, of course, but it doesn't make them crazy either. It's an occupational hazard -- thousands of readers have hundreds of dogs in the fight, and dozens of them make noise about it. Their job is to push for the things they're interested in or want most, and ours is to weigh everyone's concerns and come up with the best solution. It doesn't make them bad people for doing it, so long as they're being polite. If they're not, the issue becomes behavior.