High school game previews

About 10 years ago, when staffing was plentiful, I went back through our archives and put together a football record book for our county. It started as a Christmas make-work project, but eventually became a fun task that took me about seven months to complete. I wound up going through every game story our paper had published for the past 80 years to compile single-game, single-season and career records for rushing, passing and receiving, year-by-year records for each school, coaching records and other miscellaneous facts.
I wound up getting a series of stories out of it on the history of football in our town, plus an outstanding database of records that I've kept updated ever since. The record book has become an annual feature in our football tab and led to its own series of stories a few years later when one of our teams had a ridiculously high-powered offense that broke a lot of longstanding marks. It was great to be able to put that in a historical context and track it week to week, and kind of satisfying hearing the PA announcer call out some of the records being broken and knowing that without my work no one would've had a clue about that accomplishment.

I'd recommend that project for anyone who can spare the time, but your mileage may vary. We're a small town that's only had 4 to 6 high schools at any given time, our paper has been around for more than 100 years, and we've had some wise and dedicated sports writers over the years who thankfully put season stats in from time to time (and included them in their game stories). Obviously, not every paper has the benefit of all of that.

 

Georgia is great with the historians website (accurate scores, team records, final polls, champions, team histories of each school and even ones no longer existing dating back to before the 1950s). It's a great resource for getting the rivalry's series record, or knowing the last time Rival A beat Rival B. I wonder how many states have something similar.

 

I agree. I think the "how they match up" kinds of stories are boring unless it's really a huge game and you break that out into some kind of chart.

Focus on the kids.

For capsules, try to get quotes from players about the opponent, unless the coach is a good quote.