Should JV results be included?

Not covering jv means you miss the best stories like when Michael Jordan was bumped to jv.

 

mwhahaha, +1.

 

OK. JV can be included as long as they aren't treated as varsity results. I would really make them basic, small type, and really devalue their appearance. Varsity matters.

Why should a good JV player get press over any varsity player?

 

Well, this is a story-based business. Some players of lower quality are more interesting than players with more skill. I can think of a couple instances where I've done a small piece on a JV player, like a foreign exchange student who was playing tennis, and another who quit the sport she was All-Division in to play JV girls lacrosse. (She eventually got on varsity as the year progressed though.)

 

Actually, they made the playoffs two years later. But they barely made it.

That was the point the varsity coach made in the story, that the best sophs in the conference were seeing varsity playing time. Naturally, he caught some shit from the local parents. But he was right.

 

To me, the biggest strike against JV games --- particularly in the ball-and-bat sports --- is that they play immediately before the varsity and are on some sort of a time limit. Thus, they often don't get to play a full game. Who cares if your team went undefeated in a bunch of games that only went three innings?

Congratulations to the JV kids who do well. And I'll be happy to write about them when they play on the varsity next year.

 

Guy on the barstool: "Why don't you guys do a story on our JV team. They're UNDEFEATED!!!"

Me: "I'll tell you what, if they're really that good, by the time they get to varsity, we'll be writing about those kids all the time, won't we? And when it gets to that point in time, how are you going to like it when their coverage is being diminished by all this revolutionary new JV coverage we're providing?"

Guy on a barstool: "Uhhhh ... "

 

No more calls please ... WE HAVE A WINNER!

If I'm at a football or basketball game early enough to jot down the JV score, I'll run it. One sentence. In baseball and softball, the JV and varsity games run simultaneously. If JVs are done and I see the coach, I'll ask him/her. It it's still going on when I'm done reporting the varsity game, I'm headed back to the office or to the next assignment.

I make an exception for freshman football, since the frosh coach, who has been at this particular school for years, and always e-mails a full box the day after the game. In fact, one year he wrote me before the game and said he'd heard we would cover his game since they were playing their rival and both are undefeated. I told him were up to our armpits in volleyball and water polo playoffs that night (which we were) and thanked him for checking in. Day after their game, come in, and there's the box score. If we named a JV coach of the year ...

 

Here, the JV game in those sports will come after the varsity game (on those rare occasions when it's not a varsity doubleheader). If the field has no lights or if there's a threat of rain, then the varsity game is more likely to be completed.

What makes JV games here a joke is that they're five innings, regardless of the circumstances. They don't even play extras. Tied after five? Go home. Also, they'll have up to 12 in the batting order, switching them on and off defense as they please.

 

Great stuff. Point. Set. Match.

 

We're a 25000-circ daily that covers 13 high schools, and we do a daily prep roundup for events we do not staff. I'd NEVER staff or solicit JV information, but JV coaches call us with results, and we run scores and a few standouts (a few meaning three or four) in agate type at the bottom, after all of the varsity capsules.

On another subject: If a JV football player rushed for 1700 yards and 30 TDs, our notebook item would discuss why that player is on JV, and the varsity head coach's answer to that question.

 

I guess it depends on your situation, but we don't. About once every other year, we might put a JV score in at the end of a varsity linescore, usually basketball, but that's it. As someone put it earlier, around here JV games are little more than scrimmages, to get the small fry some PT. And in eight years in this job, I've not fielded one complaint about it.