Great to watch/play, awful to cover

Yeah, I had one of these track meets last week. A sectional, so there were like 15 different teams, a million things going on at the same time. Plus, you have to remember, it's boys AND girls, which makes it even more difficult.

Yet ANOTHER wrench thrown in is when you're freelancing (as I was last week). If you're working for a paper and taking results over the phone, at least you know who the top athletes are and what to look for cause you've spent all spring doing agate and writing stories. But when you're freelancing and don't know that much about the teams, you go in blind.

I mean, I do research and usually ask that the SE email me some sort of preview that they wrote so I know something, but it's still a bitch. A tip on the track meets is to focus small. Nobody wants to read a 30-inch story that's essentially just long-form agate (you know, so and so won the 100, so and so won the 200, etc.).

Pick two or three kids, maybe, and focus on them. Double-winners are always good, defending state champs, etc. Sometimes you'll catch a race with an exciting finish, and you can describe that, too, if a "big name" won the race. Then maybe at the end of the story, you can "tack on" a paragraph such as, "Other local winners were Johnny Buttfuck in the 100 hurdles, Lizzie Lipstick in the long jump...."

As for mentioning who qualified for state and all that other comprehensive junk, that's what the agate tells you. If a parent complains, fuck it. I don't care about that anymore, anyways. And the good thing about freelancing is that the paper you're working for, not you, has to deal with dumb complaints, anyways.

 

That's a great tip.

You can observe a lot by watching, and you can learn a lot by asking. If I'm covering a sport I don't know much about, I never hesitate to ask a coach or an athlete questions on strategy or even rules.

You make another great point about focusing on specific stories. People get caught up in trying to include everything, when taking a smaller focus for these large events is the way to go. Find an interesting story or two, really "feature" it up, then you can always do a "tack on" paragraph or two for other winners, etc.

And the point of agate is to be comprehensive. If you're going to basically write your story like long-form agate, then the agate is a waste of space and time.

 

Not to be snarky, but ... why would you cover a high school dual track meet? You must have some great one-on-one races or field events or two state powers or something going on to make it worthwhile.

 

For the same reason you cover high school baseball, football or basketball games. There's interest in it, and they also compete for conference dual-meet titles. I didn't say I'm working at the NY Times covering high school track meets. High School sports is what we cover.

Like I said in an earlier post. In 10 years I probably cover two dual-meets a year where the story is about the actual meet, i.e. the scoring, who had the advantage where, and what have you. I go into just about every dual-meet with a specific story or two in mind that I want to write to make it more of a feature-type story. And if something comes up and you end up getting a 76-74 meet, you make adjustments as you go.

 

I've covered a lot of boxing and I still find it difficult to adequately describe the action in a fight where there isn't a lot of action, where it's a tactical fight where neither guy lands any really heavy punches.

 

13-year-old baseball. Bar none.

These are kids who were playing on the Little League fields a year ago, but the pitchers have gone from 46 feet to 60.5 feet, the basepaths are 90 feet instead of 60. The tournaments for this age group are a study in futility sometimes.

There are a handful of baseball sanctioning organizations that transition using 75-foot basepaths (Senior Little League, IIRC), but others (Babe Ruth) that make the poor kids (especially the catchers and long-relievers) have to go through that transition.