How to survive spring sports madness (preps)

I love spring sports season.

Outdoor track is a blast, lacrosse is fun to watch, boys volleyball in our area is pretty competitive and softball lasts and hour and a half.

Beats the hell out of summer, that's for sure.

We have nine high schools to cover across six weekly papers so we usually try to pinpoint a couple of the bigger crossover games between papers and go to those. I'd say on average we hit each team in our area four or five times a season and that's not bad.

Some people complain, obviously, but I really couldn't care less.

 

Around here, baseball is king in the spring. The season starts in mid-February and we usually have 4-5 state championship-caliber teams in our area. That's where the bulk of our prep coverage goes in the spring. If there is a fast-pitch team that is really good, they'll get some attention, but otherwise, it a case of, "you send it in (preferably by e-mail or fax) and we'll run it on the agate page."

With a coverage area that includes a D-1 program, an NAIA college, two highly-rated Jucos and 35 high schools, and a staff of 4 full-time and 1 part-timer, we're not about to try to run down results from every high school golf tournament, tennis match or track meet. Or every baseball and softball game, for that matter. The coaches here know the drill. If they want their results in the paper, they have to call or send it in some kind of way.

 

Regular season track, in general, is just practice for the post season. I've never heard a kid say a regular season meet was important, because most of the leagues I covered...the league champ was decided at the one-day league meet, not overall finishes/distances from the regular season (which to me, doesn't make sense). I assume some leagues do keep track this way, but not where I have worked.

So basically, anything that isn't a league title or state tournament = useless info, in my mind.

 

We're still in basketball (for one more day at least), but we're almost out of baseball and softball tournament season, which is a blessing. District play starts next week. I'd gladly take a single weekend baseball or softball box over taking six per team in one sitting on a Saturday deadline.

Throw in track, soccer, golf and tennis on top of that, and it's enough to make you cry uncle.

Football is a frickin' breeze compared to that.

 

And furthermore, never mind preps. We get enough from our four colleges alone that we could fill a whole page we can't spare.

 

Why is it that NAIA baseball starts in January and why the hell should anyone care about NAIA anything?

 

Hope for rainouts, especially on doubleheader Saturdays. Generally if it's a wet spring here, the teams will only play the mandated league games. If non-league games are rained out, they're canceled.

 

Obviously, it depends on your resources: space and manpower. If you have a 4-5 page section, you can get more in than a 1-2 page section.

Regardless, at somepoint you have to prioritize. Maybe narrow your geographical coverage zone a bit, or not run so many of the small schools. Plenty of different ways to narrow it done, depending on your situation.

And, yes, you get to decide what you run. If a coach can't email/fax me results on a track meet, I'm under no requirement to sit there for 20 minutes taking dictation, especially when I have stories to write and edit, pages to design and photos to prepare and four other coaches calling. It's just a matter of being practical.

 

I'd rather write features, but our readers seem to demand more game coverage. In the last few years, we've also switched from a weekly newspaper to a daily Web site that puts out a newspaper once a week, which has made game coverage even more important.
A high volume of youth sports that I'm kind of required to publish in the print edition also limits what I can do, especially with fewer pages.

 

Only track and soccer here. No baseball, no softball. It's our lightest season as far as number of sports, so we hit both track and soccer hard. Works out pretty well.

The greatest thing about the spring is everything is done by dark and it all makes the first edition of the paper.

 

About 10 years ago, nobody but the biggest schools around here played baseball under the lights. Now every 1A team has lights and we're slammed at 10:30.

 

I agree that a little feature goes a long way. Even just a 15-inch ditty. One story that gives a team character supplies readers with a deeper meaning of that three-sentence blurb in the roundup.