Little League?

Believe me, I noticed ...

Oh, and I saw your post, too.

 

When I was working, we did write ups of in-house league stuff when they would send it in.
Once the All-Star district tournament started, we covered every division - 8-9, 9-10, 10-11, majors, juniors, seniors - in both baseball and softball. The response from the community was outstanding and it really wasn't difficult because there wasn't much else going on.

 

It all depends on your area, but if people buy the paper for it, do it. I understand the fear that people will complain, but generally, we've created more goodwill for the paper that's outweighed the 1-2 angry calls I get a summer by a ton. Games are fast, gets me out of the office and fills the newspaper. Positives are way beyond the negatives in my neck of the woods.

 

OK, Slappy, "You can't unpee in the pool" is my favorite quote of the week so far.

 

Then after you start this up..get ready for the youth swim parents, the junior high volleyball and basketball teams, the senior citizen horseshoe league, women's slow-pitch softball, the upstart cricket league looking for players and the local all-Peruvian soccer rec league....

...you get the drift.

 

We don't have the time, space or manpower to devote to any extensive youth baseball coverage. So our policy is to do an opening-day feature from our largest league (about 1,000 kids ages 4-12), then we don't do anything else until state tournament time.

We'll usually have at least one or two state tournaments in our area, usually 10s and 12s (at one site) and 13s or 14s (either, but not both) at another. We'll occasionally get the 15-17s and 18-19s, and those are usually pretty good competition, especially if we get a World Series at those ages, which happens every so often.

I personally prefer the 13s and 14s, because you can get a good look at some of the up-and-coming talent that will be passing through the state high school ranks in a couple of years, and it's usually pretty good talent at that level.

We cover these tournaments like we would high schools, with gamers and action art, maybe a feature if something good comes up. Readers seem to be OK with it. I think they understand the competition they have for coverage, and appreciate it when we do come out.

 

You will. It's true. And maybe it's worth giving each of those the five seconds to see if it fits the definition of news you've established.

IHSS, you WILL open the proverbial can of worms with Little League coverage. That may, or may not, shape your decision. If you have a definite idea of what you want your sports section to be, then you have your best answer. And there are as many answers as there are newspapers (in other words, fewer answers every year ... rimshot ...).

 

If you truly hate spring sports, you may want to stay clear of little league baseball coverage.

 

Good advice in this thread, seriously. I think I'd rather have the swim meets, ballgames, ect. trickling in for some summer content, rather than the "why didn't you cover this" call, and the resulting profanities when I have to tell them "I didn't know about it until now."

 

Which one of them is the fastest growing sport in North America?

 

I think like the idea of covering opening day only...then the tournaments.

My community actually doesn't have a babe ruth, aka 13-14, league. So that's not a concern.

I've thrown in submitted stuff for the other youth items. I almost never get calls though.

We're hosting the 10 year old state tournament this year, so obviously I'll be there for that as well. I covered All-Stars last year. The year before, I tried doing LL boxes but it was inconvenient and tough to find a time where I could meet with the player agent to get the stats they kept.

I didn't do anything last year, but I was refueled to do something for this season just because the league is on game changer, but only one game a night has been getting scored since play started Monday, soooo, I've changed my position on it, lol. That would have been the only way it would have easily worked.

My community would love it, they did when we did it (but there weren't any phone calls upset about dumping it last season, to my surprise). I actually got "THIS IS AWESOME" calls when I added it two years ago -- about the only time that has ever happened minus one or two isolated times. I only get about 3-4 complaints per year, all of which are obviously "dimwit on the phone" worthy. Our readers seem to be understanding of my decisions so far. Been at the post for two years.

 

That's similar to what our shop (about a 20K daily) does, SpringSports ... we run pics of the opening day stuff, then pick it up in the postseason tournaments.

And not to threadjack, but a good story could be written on the demise of many Babe Ruth/Pony league divisions (13-15 year olds).

I know in our area, that age division finally closed up shop this year, after starting last season with a handful of teams, then seeing many of those kids quit once school was out due to traveling teams, camps for other sports, etc.

By that age — unfortunately — kids are either playing travel ball or they're done with baseball. Too bad; I recall having lots of fun playing Babe Ruth league through age 15 even though baseball wasn't my "best" sport. It was cool to play on the big field.

This trend might be true for Legion baseball as well; we've had a couple of those teams fold in the past few years (though not as many).