Best way to first reference high schools?

I'd prefer using the full school name on first reference, but our problem is more than half of our schools have an extend name of some sort. We have a lot of "regional" and "union" here.

"Mike Jones scored three goals for Black Valley Regional High School ..."

or

"John Doe led the Portsmouth Falls Union High School to a 2-1 victory..."

Clunky.

 

In our area, there are two schools in Rogers and Springdale, so:

First Reference:

Springdale High
Springdale Har-Ber
Rogers High
Rogers Heritage

Second reference:

Springdale
Har-Ber
Rogers
Heritage

I think spelling out "high school" just takes up too much space, unless it's completely necessary to clarify what you're taking about.

 

In Texas, they have a sort of statewide style of going with town name then school. So Memorial would be Port Arthur Memorial or Houston Memorial even though in both cases, the schools are simply "Memorial."

As a result of this style, a lot of people think there's a football powerhouse near Dallas called Southlake Carroll. Really, it's just Carroll High School in Southlake, Texas but because of the naming convention, everybody calls it Southlake Carroll. There's also a Corpus Christi Carroll and no that wasn't named after a 600-year-old English hymn. You've got others like this like Austin Westlake (just Westlake), Odessa Permian (just Permian), Converse Judson (just Judson) and many others. Non-Texans may see those names and think Austin, Odessa and Converse are part of the schools' names.

If it's a school named after the town, you just go with the name. It's Katy High and it's in the same district as Katy Taylor and Katy Cinco Ranch, among other Katy schools.

I always liked that naming convention. It's very clear and once it becomes the norm, the names just roll off the tongue or the keyboard.

 

Our style was always to use Versailles High School if it weas named after the town or Springsteen High School of Versailles if not.

 

Moving from Florida from Georgia, it was an adjustment because the naming convention flipped from city before to city after. Thus Live Oak-Suwannee but Westside-Augusta. And I moved to a border town, so we had to switch back and forth.

 

This. It also means you can refer to Podunk as PHS on second reference. I'm thinking if you only refer to the school as Podunk on first reference, technically you wouldn't be able to use PHS on second reference because you haven't introduced the HS part initially. Is that correct?

 

It's a good idea to use the word "High School" or "High" on first reference, so as to let the reader know immediately what you are discussing and avoid confusion in a city that might also have a college with the same name. (Podunk High vs. Podunk JC).

 

To me, the use of "high school" on first reference is only necessary if nothing else in the lede identifies the context:

You might say: Joe Smith scored three touchdowns to lead Podunk past Smallsville 35-7 in the State Athletic Association Class 10A bi-district playoffs Friday at Podunk.

But you might say: Joe Smith, a Podunk High graduate, will start as a true freshman for Ohio State after 10 other Buckeye tailbacks were suspended when it was discovered the Bentleys they were driving were purchased for them by boosters.

 

Our style is to put the city name before the school name on first reference for teams outside of our coverage area, then use the school name from there.
We just use the school name for our local schools.

 

I swear, one of the best things about this site is the names you all come up with for your fake schools.

 

Same.

 

I think Carroll gained the name Southlake Carroll so it wouldn't be confused with Corpus Christi Carroll. I know when I covered Carroll, we just called them Carroll. But of course that was in the Southlake paper.