High School Basketball

We have a pretty clear view of who watches what here. No girl-boy doubleheaders. If the girls are home, boys are playing the same school on the road.

 

Same.

 

That was the case here when girls' basketball first started. Then, over time, it became girl-boy doubleheaders at the smaller schools and girls one place, boys the opposite at others.

A third option was to play Girls A vs. B at A Monday, Boys A vs. B at A Tuesday, Girls A vs. C at C Thursday and Boys A vs. C Friday at C (Which still happens sometimes in one of the leagues I cover). This would happen in leagues where some of the school didn't have two gyms --- they wanted to have the schools play the same teams at the same venues in the same order.

Now, except for some occasions around the KC area, it's pretty much girl-boy doubleheaders everywhere in the state. There may be a few rare occasions where the girls team may want to play School X because they're better than the girls' team at School Y, which the boys are playing. But even those games will be scheduled on different nights.

Tournaments are a different issue. Some schools put the boys and girls at places where the tournament has both brackets. Some put them in different tournaments. This year, only two of the nine schools in the big-school league I cover chose to put its teams in different tournaments at mid-season.

I actually like girl-boy doubleheaders. I get two prime stories two nights a week automatically (and photos for both). The jucos also do doubleheaders, so for my Thursday and Monday editions, I get two prime stories automatically.

The downside: Postponements leave me with two big holes to fill instead of one. But an AP commentary and an AP feature will eat that up.

 

They play doubleheaders here with the girls starting at 6:30 and the boys 15 minutes following completion of the girls. It seems like all the schools have one solo game each year, but never more than a couple excluding holiday tournaments. Even small colleges play women/men.

We do combo stories on the high school. I do separate on the college. It's always just a matter of write it for what it's worth. We had a high school doubleheader over the weekend where the girls' game went to the wire and was a three-point game, and the boys' game was 30-point ass kicking. The girls got about 14-15 inches. The boys got three graphs.

Girls' basketball has always been big here. The gyms are usually packed (or as packed as they're gonna be) for the girls, then half to two-thirds of the people leave at halftime of the boys' game.

 

We had an interesting fall. Football was down in our area almost all the way across the board. But we had a volleyball team finish second in the state (they were VERY good and had a great following), a couple of soccer teams were among the tops in their conference and went a few rounds at state, and we had a boys cross country team win state. There were a few times when those sports bumped football out of the main slot on the page.

There were some fun stories to tell from those "non-rev" sports, but all in all, I found that most folks still wanted to read about football most of the time ...

 

For our publication, since there is a huge following for boys and girls, we cover both of the leagues equally.

Last season though, girls got a lot more attention then men because of the rookie on one of the teams. Universities and colleges are already trying to recruit her and she is only 16 years old. She is the most dominant player in the province and one of the best in the country.

 

Curling is huge in our area. I didn't know anything about curling and had never watched it before this year, but I cover it like exactly like I do with football or basketball or anything else.

It looks like it would be fun to play. They have kegs lined up right next to the ice for easy access during adult rec league -- although that does make for a strange situation when the high school kids are playing.

 

They do doubleheaders around here (actually, quadheaders since JV boys and girls go first).
We use combo stories, and the more interesting game leads. Because I notice things like attendance, it takes a great girls game and shitty boys contest for me to lead with the girls.

 

Here, we treat them as separate beats and have one person covering boys and one covering girls every night. The boys writer will usually get the box and maybe some highlights (especially if it was a good game) from the girls game. The girls writer usually gets out of there as soon as he gets done talking to people. We do a gamer and a roundup for boys and girls each game night. Once the writer gets done with hsi gamer, he kicks out an 8-12 inch roundup of the other notable games around the area/state.

 

When I was in high school in New Jersey, swimming was a winter sport. I assume it still is. Everybody has indoor pools.

As for basketball coverage, we lead with one (8-12 inches) and do the other as a capsule. Most times we'll cover both and just lead with whichever one is more interesting. Sometimes it's boys, sometimes it's girls. We do the same thing with soccer.
Usually, it ends up being pretty balanced over the course of a season. This year has been a little weird, though. Out of four schools in town, three of them have abysmal girls basketball teams. The fourth has a good girls team and a crappy boys team. And the crappy teams have often played shitty, boring games, so we end up leading with the good teams. But it's not a hard and fast rule.

 

Very balanced. Our SE is big on girls sports. (not implying that he shouldn't be)

 

We cover a boys and girls game each Tuesday and Friday night...There have been times when the girls have been the centerpiece of the section...We've also done features accordingly and I think it's as balanced as it could be.