JV coverage

Jesus man, don't do it. It really is Pandora's box. The minute you run something more than an agate line somewhere you've set a precedent that other JV parents will try to take advantage of.

I once made the mistake of running a standalone photo of an undefeated JV football team with an extended cutline. The next thing I knew, I was getting calls from JV soccer, basketball, baseball, etc. Freshman teams, youth teams, you name it. It was fucking miserable.

 

Hell MF'ing no. I have been successful to date arguing against the words "junior varsity" appearing in my sports section. Fingers crossed. The closest we get is our weekly community sports page, which runs submitted team photos of little leaguers and stuff like that.

rb

 

What is wrong with putting the score on the agate page?

Before y'all go complaining, it's done at a lot of papers, large and small.

45K I worked for made us get JV scores to include with varsity basketball boxes.

 

i once covered a HS basketball game, got their early, JV kid scored like 61

i got a quote, some stats, was going to file a 6-8-inch bar

my SE wouldn't run it, said opening a can of worms.

i think he was wrong but i get where he was coming from

 

At my last stop I got bored with varsity games so I started to cover JV, Freshman field hockey, Reserve, hell, 7th-grade soccer games, just to make things interesting. Covered a "Town Team" hoops league a bit.

You don't necessarily open a can of worms. Even with all the gamers, no one called in demanding to do more when I verved back to varsity.

 

In basketball, we run the JV score under the box score. But that's all we do. And that's all we should do. You have to draw the line somewhere.

 

35K here. We do not routinely do anything with JV. I've got enough trouble trying to get the varsity teams to call in.

But if a kid dropped 61, or if a team goes undefeated, that's worth a little sumthin'.

 

Hejira, that's one of the reasons I started covering sub-varsity stuff: varsity coaches wouldn't call it; they'd call the daily and report scores then not call me. So I decided to cover teams who wouldn't take coverage for granted. A few more varsity coaches started calling in when I didn't cover their teams for 3 weeks.

 

A line score if someone calls it in or your reporter gets it at the varsity game. Nothing else.

And under no circumstances do you run "JV standings."

They are not playing for a championship or a postseason seeding, hence, there is no such thing as JV standings.

And remember always the first rule: Anything you do for one team or one sport you will be expected to do for all teams and all sports.

If you head down this road, you have only yourself to blame when you're typing in those 4th-5th swimming results.

 

We're a 40K daily. We only run JV briefs for football, basketball and baseball for the two main local schools (we cover 75ish). Very SMALL briefs. The same goes for junior high, and it all sucks. But we don't go looking for it. If they call in, we do it (begrudginly). The only other thing we do for JV is in basketball and we put the score only in the varsity box.

I would fight it, if at all possible. It truly is a Pandora's box. Everyone will come calling in.

 

Well played, then.

Hey, when I was working the weeklies in Virginia – sounds like the start of a Verbal Kint story – we covered the one high school's JV, freshman, etc. I think that's part of the community thing. We still fancy ourselves a community paper – it's just that the community is a damned sight bigger.

 

At my last gig the previous sports guy grew up in the town and knew all the parents of the JV players so I really think he covered JV more than he should because he knew the parents would bitch if he didn't do anything and he was a wet blanket type of person.
Meanwhile I come in not knowing anyone barely, and parents expect the same JV coverage because it's been that way before, which means they want me to attend the JV games, maybe run a photo and then stay for the varsity games. It got old pretty fast. I ended up telling parents who would call I'd get the score if the coaches had it but I wasn't going to cover the JV.
So If anything don't open that can of worms in consideration of the person who'll replace you if you decide to move on later. Or if you do at least give em a warning.