Off the record

First post here, actually came to get everyone's thoughts on this situation:

I cover a men's track beat for a college newspaper and one time, at practice, I saw one of the distance runners just lounging in the stands so I sat down and talked to him. He didn't know if he was running over the weekend so we just shot the shit and talked about all of the hot track girls practicing in front of us.

The men's coach came by, saw me, and sat down with the runner sitting with us and I just started the interview. I had my recorder out, he knew it was on the record. Then, after I was done, he started talking to his runner. Their conversation started getting a little in depth and I could tell they were timid talking around me so I told them basically not to worry about it, I wasn't going to use any of it. My recorder was off. Then the coach told the runner he wasn't competing, the runner expressed that he wanted to run, felt good, yada yada yada.

So I don't know really what to do. This guy is one of their best athletes and they're going to a good competition so I'd need to know. He made reference to me when he finally said the guy could run, saying "See how easy I am?"

I saw some potential for a decent lead in those happenings considering there's not a lot of wiggle room for creativity when it comes to covering track in general, let alone a preview story. I decided to work it in as my lead. Now I was wondering if I should ask him if I could use that since technically, it was off the record. I think I could have submitted it and he wouldn't have cared, but I asked him anyways and he said it was cool.

Anyone else have a situation like that and how did they handle it? Did I need to confirm that with him? Love the site.

 

Ask a coach a follow-up regarding the "compete or don't-compete" situation, and then pull out your tape recorder. His reaction will allow you to gauge if his exchange with the runner is story fodder.

Or you could wait until the coach walks away and talk to the kid about the situation, with recorder out. He'll likely talk.