How to survive spring sports madness (preps)

I've always said indoor track is the equivalent to a wiffle ball tournament before the baseball season starts.

During the outdoor season, we run a weekly list of the top five performances in every event. One of our girls coaches called up one day and started bitching because her high jumper wasn't in the list. I asked her what meet her best jump was in, so we could look it up to confirm. She said, "It was in both of our indoor meets." I said we didn't put indoor times or distances in. Coach just flipped out, started screaming that indoor was just as important as outdoor. So we started putting a notation that it was the five best performances in OUTDOOR meets. Coach complained every week for the rest of the season.

 

Actually, all kidding aside, indoor track WAS pretty big in Wisconsin, and my high school annually held one of the biggest indoor meets in the state at the University of Wisconsin, and it was all day and night and two divisions and out of state schools (Illinois and Iowa in particular) and a big deal. So I guess it depends on where you live.

Here in Florida, there's only a smattering of elite high schoolers going to bigger indoor meets usually sponsored by colleges, and they mostly go straight to outdoor.

 

I've had roundups at previous stops bigger than that. at some point in the season you may have baseball, softball, golf, track, tennis ... all at once. then if you've got even four schools, that's 20-plus events. you mean to say each one get's two sentences and move on? kinda thinkin that's your disservice.

then you've got college, maybe, with their events. and most places have more than four high schools - maybe double that to eight plus a college. we'll add one more to make it an even 10 for easier math. How do you cut that to 20-22 inches in anything other than an agate list of scores?

 

Every season has its challenges. The spring is usually the most challenging because everything happens at the same time. Baseball, softball, tennis (boys and girls) are usually played on a Monday, Wednesday, Friday rotation, all at the same time. Track is usually once a week, on Wednesdays, right on deadline for us. Wednesday games are out of the question, as much as people want me to cover them because if I do, I miss layout deadlines.
Lacrosse is typically a Tuesday-Thursday thing.
On any given day I can have five or six games that somebody can make an argument that I really need to cover, but I can only be in one place at one time, which means people associated with four or five teams will think I've covered the wrong game. Oh well.
It's more difficult to find stringers in the spring, too, because adults usually can't get out of work early enough to cover the games and kids often don't have transportation.
I just do the best I can. For some readers that will be good enough. For some it won't.

 

They stopped indoor track in this state. The horse barn they held all the meets in was declared a health hazard for people with breathing difficulties...

 

So what exactly do you do with 30 high schools calling in baseball, softball, track, tennis, golf? Let's say you get 30 call-ins. Even if you only write 2 inches on each, that's 60 inches of roundup. Might help to break them into roundups based on sport, but then you're taking up more space with headlines, rules, etc...

No win situation. It's gonna be ugly and unreadable no matter what. Well, unless you just run boxes. And that ain't working.

 

Look, the bottom line is you have to pick your spots. Reality leaves us allwith too much to cover in too little time.

Keep an eye out and be aware of possible story lines. Cover the best matchups for your coverage area and don't worry too much about angry readers. Few are rational enough to understand why we do and don't cover events and our limitations.

Always understand how important a notebook for the better spring sports can help out. So can a short feature story and photo on interesting angle every week.

Just don't get too up or down. Do your best, take a break whenever you can and focus on the positives.

 

That's all well and good, but it doesn't change the fact that every Tuesday and Friday, a paper with 30 schools will get nonstop call-ins from 4-10 p.m. Those results have to go somewhere.

 

As Glen said, you have to prioritize. I've long believed you will get more mileage from a couple of well-written insightful features than you will from an endless line of game stories. The features put a face on a team or athlete, give the readers a reason to care if he/she wins or loses. Then you can come back and give readers details of how he/she fared in a roundup.

Much more interesting to read someone's life story than the fact Joe Smith struck out twice with runners in scoring position in a 9-3 loss to Podunkville.

I would try to do at least one feature per week, rotated among the different sports and teams.

Frankly, gamers are largely irrelevant until you get to late in the season or playoffs. Run short roundups on baseball/softball, agate only on track, golf and tennis until district meets. I always hated trying to take a track meet with 40 events and summarize in four paragraphs. Just too many storylines to keep track of.

On agate, you have to DEMAND that coaches email or fax it. If you are a one or two-person department, you can't spend five hours on the phone taking track and tennis agate. You'll run yourself into the ground. Everyone has access to email these days. It will make life much easier.

 

The best thing about the spring is it's the shortest of the three seasons.

 

I love baseball. My coaches all have programs that send a full box score after the game. Makes things easy, especially when they are out of town at tournaments.

 

First...you can't DEMAND anything of high school coaches. Ever.

Second...I agree on the features vs. gamers. But that doesn't account for the gazillion call-ins you get. What do you do with those? Not run them? Wrong.