Private school kids?

My experience with this, a parent from outside the coverage area bitching is usually a ploy. They get you to do an article on Johnny, then they take said article to their own hometown paper and beat them about the brow with it for their "lack of coverage."

The neighboring SE's and I had a nice list going of parents who do this trick.

 

He goes to college, then it's a story. But, you don't cover that school. We deal with a ton of prep school kids in our area who want coverage. I tell them, they have to go to a school we cover.

We don't cover schools outside our area. Hell, we don't cover schools in our area.

BTW, may not be the place, but got 5 emails from a dad who wants us to do a story on his kid who is a "perfect gentleman, and better than I will ever be." It so happens that this kid made All-Conference in football and baseball, and is a good student.

WTF?

All-Conference? We have 80 kids make those teams.
I politely said since the high school season ended 4 weeks ago, and football season was 8 months ago, that it just isn't a timely story (which is true).

What I wanted to say is that the kid isn't that exceptional. Is that too harsh?

For revenue purposes, I think we should do fake newspapers where we write a feature story on this kid and sell him 20 copies or something. Then, he can feel special.

Remember, everyone gets a trophy.

 

Just like you said...
Ma'am we rely on information from coaches and the results they submit to choose our teams. Sorry, but as often as we tried, Private coach didn't turn in any results this season despite our requests.
We would have loved to consider him, however we can't beg coaches to cooperate. I would suggest that you might want to take this up with the school's athletic director. It might be too late for your son, but perhaps it might help some deserving athletes in the future.

 

Like others have suggested, tell the parent the truth:
A) Her kid had a fine season, but he's not at a school in our coverage area. Someone who plays in the SEC can't win the ACC player of the year award, can they?
B) You'd love to include his stats or a mention of the team's games from time to time, but you haven't been able to get the coach or school to cooperate. They didn't send you a roster, let alone scores, so you can't keep up with them.

 

A few years ago, there was a kid on a local high school hockey team who was the leading scorer as a freshman. The parents were upset that I didn't write a feature on him and they were upset with the coach because he didn't push me to do a feature on the kid.
The next year, the kid transfers to a private school out of the area. Tranferring from a school we cover to a school we don't cover doesn't seem like a way to get more coverage of the kid, but hey, what do I know. Also, I know in hockey if a kid wants to play in college he's going to have to do an extra year, either PG or juniors anyway, so what's the sense of paying four years of tuition at a private school rather than one year. Again, hey, what do I know.
At the private school the kid took two years to make the varsity and he ended up playing Division III college baseball, which he could have done if he stayed at the public school.
As you could imagine, it's a rich family, but making decisions like that, somehow I doubt that family will stay rich.

 

One of the things you give up when you send your kid away to private school is coverage in the hometown newspaper.

If that's very important to you, send your kid to the hometown high school.