Taxpayers deserve JV coverage.

I do enjoy the surprise from the same parents when they find out the only reason the JV was undefeated was because all the other schools in the area had awesome sophomores and juniors that they were playing on varsity, and those kids are still there when the undefeated JV squad moves up.

 

If the varsity's that bad, maybe the JV kids should be playing varsity.

 

Caller: "I'm Johnny Donkeynuts' mom, and I have a team photo we'd like to run in the paper. I have all the kids' names typed up, too."
Me: "Of course, ma'am, that'll be $50 for placement on a black and white page or $75 for color."

I'm serious. We don't waste hours on this shit. We make them buy space as if it is a display ad. Fuck it, why not? People buy these dumbass "Happy 50th Dad! - Love the Assmuncher family" as display ads, so why not youth sports? If the parents are dumb enough to fork out a few hundred bucks for the league, they can drop us a few Andrew Jacksons.

 

We get so much sub-varsity and even middle school bull shit that it boggles the mind. The previous sports editor was in the habit of running anything and everything submitted, so readers came to expect it. Now, I'm begging our current sports editor to cut it off before it eats us out of house and home.

Tonight, I ran three columns top to bottom of "community sports": sub-varsity results, tryouts for club teams, YMCA announcements, etc. At the very least I am lobbying for us to start a designated day (like a Tuesday) for us to collect all this stuff and run it rather than bumping important news out of the section on days when space is tight and there is a lot happening.

 

Wait your fuckin' turn like everyone else. When your kid moves up to varsity, THEN we'll start covering JV just to give you something else to whine about.

 

You're moving in the right direction Mark. When I took over about 13-14 months ago, we were running those announcements every day on the agate page and team photos whenever they came in ... yet we didn't have room for NHL or WNBA boxes? Granted, there's no ice in this county and the WNBA is low priority to most fans, but these are situations where agate can be a weapon: A glance and the boxes says plenty. And I had a hard time justifying giving away daily as much space as we were to announcements. There's been no complaints from the youth sports crowd now that we're down to once a week, and anyone offering me money to get in more than once a week does get transferred abruptly to the ad manager's extension.

And, yes, the JVs time is coming ... most folks understand that. It's explaining that to those who don't that's the problem. It's like the folks wondering why their team hasn't had any photos in and gets those small stories while the crosstown rivals are in all the time. Well, let's see ... your team has only been at home once all year, the other games have been a couple of hours away and even if he shot just a quarter, there's no way the shooter gets back in time to beat deadline. You would think that would be enough.

 

As the one who started the thread, here's our policy at an 11,000-circulation T-S daily covering four schools: We take JV stuff if it's called in, it gets 1-2 graphs in a roundup (or at the end of the varsity story if we're talking basketball or something else where the JV plays first). If they call fine. If they don't, we don't go looking for it. I agree with the poster who said their time will come when they make the varsity.

Incidentally, not a peep out of the parents since their kids lost the starting QB job.

 

I always have to laugh at the ones who play the "they work just as hard as the varsity team" card. Really? Do you REALLY think those 8 year olds work as hard as the varsity players? Amazing.

 

That's the only way to go. Suggest it now.

 

Why has nobody suggested not running most of this stuff?

We don't, and we haven't gotten a call or e-mail complaining about it in a long, long time.

We'll go as far as announcing tryout dates, camps, clinics and appearances by stars in the area. Nothing sub-varsity or community-oriented appears on our pages (maybe the Lifestyle section; I don't know. I don't read it).

 

Second graders? Seriously?

"Billy, what happened on that game-winning touchdown?"

"I really like SpongeBob. Do you like SpongeBob? He's funny."

 

I realize I'm setting myself up for a bashing, but I just read "nothing sub-varsity or community oriented appears on our pages."

If you work for a major metro, I could understand that statement. For those of us piss-ants on the small market level, I guess our work doesn't matter.

Insofar as the second-graders, my suggestion was a feature, not gamers.

The arrogance and ego by some of you guys is amazing.

OK, I've grabbed my ankles. Start stuffing.