I had a high school baseball coach several years ago that also wanted to be editor of our newspaper, too. After covering them all season, the school played host to a regional. I called him on his cell phone a couple days before the regional and asked him to send me their final regular-season stats — stats that I had received from thme on a weekly or biweekly basis all season. He told me that he didn't want to fax me a copy of the stats because it would be giving a scouting report to the opposing teams in the regional. I told him that I all I wanted to do was promote his team, and said there was nothing wrong with adding stats to my story (every reader wants to know who leads the team in home runs, runs batted in, batting average and hit leaders, along with the pitchers' won-loss record and earned run average, right"). I spent the next day calling the coach, only to be told that I wasn't getting the statistics. I called the athletic director and he said, "If he doesn't want to send in the stats, then that's his business." I kept calling the AD, saying it was unfair and that he had already given a copy to the radio station, our main competitor. I told him that I wanted equal access. As fate would have it, the team I was covering, the No. 1 or 2 seed, lost its opening-round game and was out of the tournament. Coach was being a little ***** and was giving me dirty looks and treating me like I had done them wrong while the other tournament teams kept playing. Sometimes, on the high school level, a reporter has to remember that he's a prep coach and a school teacher. Sometimes those types are self-centered and unprofessional because it is what it is — an insecure high school coach.
