Way off track

[doctorx]

Which high school sport do you find the most difficult to cover -- especially if you have to get results on the phone -- because of lack of organization?

I saw track and nothing is a close second. ("Uhhh... we didn't get his time. Uhhh... they hadn't figured up the totals when the bus left. Uhhh... there's supposed to be this Web site that has the results. Uhhh...")

 

[tapintoamerica]

Nothing worse in the call-taking world than track stats. Too many events. Too many names. And then just when you think you're done, the voice on the other line says, "And now for the girls' results ...."

 

[smsu_scribe]

No debate from me. Haven't taken a track score yet this year, but you always know it's coming. Season starts next week. :'(

 

[Baron Scicluna]

Swimming scores ain't fun to take either.

 

[mustangj17]

Which high school sport do you find the most difficult to cover -- especially if you have to get results on the phone -- because of lack of organization?

I saw track and nothing is a close second. ("Uhhh... we didn't get his time. Uhhh... they hadn't figured up the totals when the bus left. Uhhh... there's supposed to be this Web site that has the results. Uhhh...")

That's called being a ****ty coach. If the coach doesn't have the time for his top runners he should be shanked.

 

[WaylonJennings]

I chose to cover h.s. track last spring as a beat because, basically, I was to the point that I could cover baseball or softball in my sleep and wanted the challenge of taking on something I'd never done before. I'd spent the previous four years covering exclusively big-time college football and basketball, and was doing a stringing gig while I was between stages of life.

Challenge was right ...

 

[jfs1000]

Nothing worse in the call-taking world than track stats. Too many events. Too many names. And then just when you think you're done, the voice on the other line says, "And now for the girls' results ...."

Wow, I thought it was just my shop. "And now for the girls meet" makes me break out in a cold sweat. On a side note, after about 30 years we are no longer taking full agate for track. Think about this, we would take top 3 in each event for agate. After 15 track meets you can imagine the amount of space it took up. I measured it for 3 weeks in the spring a couple of years ago and we were running twice as much track agate than any other sport.

Through an act of Congress (actually, told management it was either hire someone else or only winners) we finally have equality of coverage.

 

[mustangj17]

I chose to cover h.s. track last spring as a beat because, basically, I was to the point that I could cover baseball or softball in my sleep and wanted the challenge of taking on something I'd never done before. I'd spent the previous four years covering exclusively big-time college football and basketball, and was doing a stringing gig while I was between stages of life.

Challenge was right ...

Covering track is easy. Every event has a paper trail. Coaches can't be everywhere at once, so the score sheets are submitted to the coaches/scorekeepers get a look at em. They will have the athlete name, the school and the distance/height. There's your results for five events. All these events will be done by the time the 2 mile rolls around, so you can scribble down the results during that event.

The rest of the events? Just get a watch. Your not going to have the same times as the coaches in any of the events under the 400 meter but it will help you check against what he/she has.

 

[expendable]

The coaches who call to my shop just give me the winners. I never really said one way or the other, but I'm not complaining. Now, I'll run the top-three for conference championship meets, but other than that, I just take what I get.

 

[Trey Beamon]

I enjoy covering track live, but don't want anything to do with it over the phone.

 

[Ace]

The thing with track is that a meet between two schools is no big deal. So it wouldn't be great to cover and you probably aren't going to get solid information most of the time.

But I always enjoyed covering a bigger meet. Always something to focus in on. And you can interview kids while it's going on.

 

[mpcincal]

When I was taking results in my big-city paper job way back when, we had a set of established "standards" for track and swimming. The prep editors would determine the minimum numbers, and any of the team's members who met or exceeded those stats got in. Not as bad as it could be but two main problems were that it could be very time-consuming (especially for the loaded schools) and you'd always get a couple coaches a night trying to get in someone below the line and he/she would start saying "But such-and-such was the standard last year."

 

[Hank_Scorpio]

Covering track is easy. Every event has a paper trail. Coaches can't be everywhere at once, so the score sheets are submitted to the coaches/scorekeepers get a look at em. They will have the athlete name, the school and the distance/height. There's your results for five events. All these events will be done by the time the 2 mile rolls around, so you can scribble down the results during that event.

The rest of the events? Just get a watch. Your not going to have the same times as the coaches in any of the events under the 400 meter but it will help you check against what he/she has.

Yes, COVERING track isn't that hard.

We're mainly talking about taking PHONE RESULTS, with coaches who don't always have their **** together.

 

[flexmaster33]

Track is big here (Oregon), so all our coaches are great about uploading results to www.athletic.net...if you haven't searched that out yet, it's worth a look...all the states are listed...not sure how active they all are though.

Track is my favorite beat in the spring...a ton of variety and you get to see many of the school's best athletes. I leave baseball and softball to our stringers for the most part. That's the boring duo of this season for me.

On a side note, we too deemed running full agate a poor use of hours in such a budget crunch, so we did away with it, except for running full placers on the season-end district meet. Some coaches have mentioned the change (also for swimming), but it's been a huge time-saver to just get the top kids (multi-event winners) into a recap, etc.

 

[Ace]

Covering track is easy. Every event has a paper trail. Coaches can't be everywhere at once, so the score sheets are submitted to the coaches/scorekeepers get a look at em. They will have the athlete name, the school and the distance/height. There's your results for five events. All these events will be done by the time the 2 mile rolls around, so you can scribble down the results during that event.

The rest of the events? Just get a watch. Your not going to have the same times as the coaches in any of the events under the 400 meter but it will help you check against what he/she has.

Yes, COVERING track isn't that hard.

We're mainly talking about taking PHONE RESULTS, with coaches who don't always have their **** together.

The only thing that makes track any different from all the other sports where coaches don't have their **** together is that they have a lot more results.

 

[Steak Snabler]

The thing that sucks about track is that the many meet organizers don't give a damn about the media, they just want to make sure all the winners get their trophies/certificates. Thus, they don't have any reason to make an extra copy of the final results for you.

And also, unlike football, baseball, basketball, etc., it's not a sport where you can keep your own stats, grab a few quotes and get the hell out of Dodge. Since you've got multiple events happening simultaneously and up to eight participants in each event, you're at the mercy of the final results being posted, in a timely fashion or at all.

But yeah, taking track results over the phone is a special kind of hell, with only team tennis coming close. My advice would be to limit the results you publish to only winners or maybe top 3, or in the case of district and sub-state meets, whichever ones qualify to advance to the next round.

 

[ZTGA]

I am halfway through the track season, and one of the coaches still doesn't know any of the team results after four meets.

Also, in Georgia gatx.com is a good track resource.

 

[WolvEagle]

The only thing worse than track is field (when it comes to taking agate over the phone).

It's a neat sport to cover. Our paper's all-area meet has about 20 teams, is well-run and always has great storylines. It really is a celebration of sports in our coverage area.

 

[MileHigh]

Hated taking track calls back in the day. As the saying goes: There's only one thing worse than track. Field.

 

[fishhack2009]

There's really no way to do it with uncooperative coaches. With our space limitations, agate is out of the question anyway. I usually just hit a few top events and get those times.