'Tis the season...

I bust my tail to cover all the prep state championships and playoffs over the weekend, driving all over the state (and enjoying it by the way except for the lack of space in my section to tell all the stories -- but that's another thread).

Anyways, I return home today to find several calls and e-mails about "why didn't you cover the pee wee football championship games over the weekend? We were 10-0 and only gave up 20 points all year, blah blah blah." And then another, "Why haven't you published the photo of our U-11 boys soccer team that won a tournament last weekend yet? Our boys haven't lost all season..."

Good grief. And they don't seem to understand (like my higher ups when doling out space for the sports section apparently) that this is the pinnacle time for the high school fall sports season and when I have several teams make the state finals I've got to spend my time on that... "But they play hard too..." yeah, yeah...

Sorry had to vent. Carry on...

 

Use your paper's Web site to your advantage for the "They work so hard" parents who whine.

Establish a policy about submitted photos and results for youth league activities, get the blessing of the editor, tell him to sell the damn Web page with youth sports to a local business and then put all that shit on there.

 

Which is fine in theory, Sixtoe, but then, what do the parents send to grandparents who don't have a computer and live four States away? And what do they stick to the fridge or put in the scrapbook?
I'm with you -- the website is the perfect spot for all that stuff from a content point of view, but that's the mentality you deal with.
Best advice I can offer is to drop the photos in as quick as you can as the week progresses: perhaps to break up your agate package, if you have such a thing? Or maybe, as your section loosens up as the week goes on, take a page and package it all, and tell the complainers that it's coming as soon as space permits?

 

Huntsie, I've argued the same thing you said about refrigerator art and mailing stuff to grandma.

I agree.

But sometimes you have to do what's best. If sweetbreads has limited space and needs to devote it to preps, the Web is the route. If his editor says the U-11 kids need space, he'll have to carve it out. If he has good room maybe a "Kids corner" could be established, and again all for submitted photos.

No way I'd take an entire page and devote it to youth sports, unless ordered to from above or it's something the advertising department can sell. Strip ad across the bottom and submitted material, edited heavily, of course.

 

Save it. Run it when preps is over, if you can't get it in before.

You're full now, but you won't be here very soon. I'll be begging for stuff to run until basketball starts.

 

Do these people not have printers?

 

sweetb,

Hell, if you had covered the pee wee football championship, you'd have had twice as many calls from folks griping about why the 10-0 team got all the ink when their pee wees worked just as hard.

This job requires some emotional detachment.

 

Just do what we do, don't cover youth at all and just brush it off when people complain. We make people submit team photos to the news side for the scrapbook page which runs once a week. I love it.

 

Wait till the high school championships are over, and then the next week run a page or two of all the undefeated best-of-all-time youth teams, with a roundup. Don't force the issue if you can't. I dealt with that for 4 years at the weekly. Put the stuff in when you can.

 

Tell 'em to buy a fucking printer so they can print a copy and mail it to grammy and pee-pa in Keokuk.

 

Then there's the opposite end of the spectrum where I'm at. Girls basketball season tipped off last night (most don't play until tonight) and boys start next week. The state cross country meet is this weekend and there are still two weeks of volleyball playoffs to go.

One school I deal with is having its first home girls basketball game at 6 p.m. Friday and its last home football game at 7:30 p.m. The fact that the football team locked up a playoff spot two weeks ago means I won't be watching any weekend hoops for a while.

It's pretty likely the football team I handle will go at least three rounds, then there's catching the odd area playoff team as time permits. That means I won't see a gym until sometime in mid-December. The office can handle the basketball calls until then.

 

Girls basketball overlaps with volleyball? WTF