The end of call-takers?

I was checking out the box score of my neighborhood high school's girls' basketball team -- contrary to what others say here about prep sports, I still follow them nominally even though my daughter graduated five years ago -- and I couldn't figure out why all the names were different. Well, they were the road team, and the home team calling in gave names like these:

Ryan 10-3-23, Amber 2-0-4, Natasha 1-1-3, etc.

Yep. They mistakenly called in all the first names.

 

Again, is it just us, or why is everyone saying it's always the coaches doing the calling? I find, and have found for a long time, that the coaches aren't even picking up the phone. It's some student, or the team statistician.

 

All the coaches I have dealt with can't spell the names, don't know the records. It would be a shit show.

 

I am curious about this Shots.

Your coaches don't call in their own games?

Do you encourage the "volunteer" callers.

I would much rather talk to a coach, especially if there's something out fo the ordinary.

Oh, there are a few instances where I would rather have a trained orangutan call rather than the coach.

Of course, I suppose if you are at a big place it might not matter as much.

 

HejiraHenry....we've formulated a pretty dang good system of having coaches/scorekeepers/even got-their-shit-together-and-know-what-to-report-entails parents emailing us reports, quotes, etc., from games we can't cover...i used to have a voice mail setup to where they could call in reports and rattle off the info, but invariably they would get long-winded, the message would cut off before they got finished and they wouldn't call back....i also get faxed reports, but not as much in recent years because of e-mail capabilities...i am finding more and more that email is the route to go, but you gotta get these folks disciplined to report their games win or lose...i fax out a couple of reminders at the start of each season to give them our email address and how to turn in their info...and for the most part, it's worked very well...

 

Honestly, Billy, I don't think we've ever considered in terms of whether we prefer the statisticians calling in or not. It's just always been the way it is.

On a call-in, we're rarely going to be quoting a coach, because we're almost always talking about a straight add in a roundup. So we don't really need the coach's input.

If there's something out of the ordinary and it's really worth chasing down, I imagine we'd probably ask to talk to the coach.

 

Most of our coaches call, Shot, but we do get the occasional book-keeper. It's generally not a big deal.

What's the big deal with wrestling reports? It's just 28 or so names, almost as many -- if not the same -- as a basketball call-in or far less frustrating than a swimming or track event.

 

OK, cool.

Again, where we were, we'd stick a quote or two in the lead to a roundup, especially if it was something significant or a game we had wanted to get to.

 

Ah, here's the thing with wrestling. Saturdays, many schools are going to four-ways or five-way duals in order to get their kids more matches.

All local teams in a five-team dual? 1-2, 1-3, 1-4, 1-5, 2-3, 2-4, 2-5, 3-4, 3-5, 4-5. Eleven summaries. That's when agate editors turn crimson.

 

couple of years ago, honest to goodness, i had a coach drop off about five pages of HANDWRITTEN information on his season-ending banquet. couldn't make heads or tails of the players' names and their spelling. i called him and said the only way this is going to get published is to have someone type it up. he did and we ran it.
but one better than that.
cross country, guys, cross country. we have an annual fall meet in which i believe every high school and prep program this side of El Paso enters. got to be nearly 200 teams with thousands of runners. and this past year, the director dropped off 12 pages of totally handwritten results..y'all should have seen the scribbling, illegible times, etc...so call the director up and she was baffled that we couldn't read it...got her to email the whole freakin' package of stats....i almost signed up for a year's supply of Valium after that caper. ha.

 

I've done that stuff, and it can be a pain. But for the regular matches, even the tri-meets, they're not bad at all. And if they're all local teams, you're going to do them anyway. Why not get all of them done (maybe not all, but please play along) in one shot?

 

We do most things by fax, simply because many coaches in our area are computer illiterate. I find it's sometimes easier to type out a legible, faxed box score than reformat e-mails.

Call-ins are the norm for us, even when we get a fax, and it's from the coach 95 percent of the time, so most prep roundups are sprinkled with quotes and detail. If it's not in by 10:30. It's not in. And if a coach calls at 10:20 to report a 4:30 p.m. game and we're swamped, it doesn't go in.