Hyper-local folks: How'd you get through summer sports coverage?

So, we're starting up with fall previews next week and that means that --thankfully-- the summer sports season is officially over.

My question to you hyper-local folks is...how did you get through it?

For us, we did a bunch of local features. I profiled a couple of local boxing/MMA gyms, we had a couple of big area road races and a ton of Little League.

How about you?

The reason I ask is for next year. Perhaps we can spread some ideas around to keep in the back of our minds. Thanks in advance.

 

Adult Softball and various special events and features. Adult softball wasn't too bad, but it's a big deal in this area.

 

In the last few weeks, no particular order -- girls golf, rec swimming, rec field hockey, Little League and a wiffle ball tournament. We even had a feature on a senior citizen chairing a ping pong tournament oversees. Not playing, just in charge.

 

We got lucky, because for us the college baseball season ran an extra month after Southern Miss made it to the College World Series, plus we had the NcNair shooting and the on-going BF saga breaking in our backyard. So it was a busier-than-usual summer.

We also loaded up on the usual youth baseball, plus we had some pretty good features that got us through in good shape. And the first high school football game of the season is tonight.

 

City golf and city tennis tournaments. Lots of recruiting coverage, and keeping an eye on how the high school athletes are doing in their summer ventures. Having a major Division I university in our backyard helps.

 

When I was at the hyper-local weekly, I covered New Hampshire's summer soccer league hard (lots of local HS, men's and women's teams), summer hoops, heavy coverage on all forms of baseball (Little League, Babe Ruth, Legion) and alternative outdoor sports, along with Vermont-New Hampshire All-Star games, etc. It wasn't terribly difficult to fill pages.

 

Back in my time at a daily with no wire service, American Legion baseball and Little League were the main space fillers. For little league, we wrote a paragraph or two (or eight if we had a lot of space) on every game. Just wrote it up off the scorebooks. Helped that we were an afternoon paper. Also ran team photos for all the area teams and even kept track of standings. Not the most fun job in the world, but it sold papers and filled space.

 

Swim meets and a state baseball tournament for 12-year-olds. Otherwise, the town was pretty much dead for sports. Fortunately, my publisher understands you can't not use the Royals and Chiefs, so I got by.

 

Our swim team is huge and very good (undefeated for many years going) - we loaded on swim stories and agate ... the county next door had a great swim team as well ... little league all-stars ... features ... budget cuts creating coaching layoffs ... look-ahead to the fall stories ... somehow every year we make it through summer and get the papers out ...

 

We have a Division II university with Division I hockey. Last year, we started doing relatively harmless personality profiles of incoming hockey recruits, and we expanded it out to the moderately successful men's basketball and national championship contender women's basketball programs. Of course, now the football coach (an ordinarily decent guy) is mad at me because they weren't included, but they also have three times the recruits and this was a small class. Regardless, it's two stories a week, plus often times we were able to get art from the kid's family, local paper or area photographers.

We also have a six-team Town Ball league that plays twice a week. It's not fantastic baseball, but it's competition with occasional drama and art opportunities. Took a lot of pictures of beer league softball and Little League games. Not much news value, but fantastic PR.

 

so if you hit little league baseball hard in the summer, how do you justify to parents/coaches not running other youth league sports the rest of the year?

 

We tried something a little different this year. We contacted every local golf course and asked them "what is your signature event?" Then we assigned them to a different staffer. So we covered about 15 golf tournaments on top of the minor league baseball, youth league baseball, etc. Every week we also do a page called Home Team that is entirely local with golf scores and pairings, results from the local dirt track, team photos, etc. The community loves it. In the past we've written a feature, but we haven't since the last round of layoffs/cutbacks in April, but we plan to bring them back in the fall. And can someone please explain to me what the hell "hyper local" is? Local is local, isn't it? What makes it hyper?