Lessons From a High School Sports Editor: Covering Athletics During a Pandemic
*Last year, I wrote about my experience covering my school’s varsity basketball team. That article can be found here: https://medium.com/the-voice-of-truth/what-ive-learned-covering-a-varsity-basketball-team-ae9b92609e12
The 2020–21 high school sports season was one for the books. From game cancellations to entire seasons hanging in the balance, there was no doubt it was difficult for athletes and coaches alike. However, an underrated aspect of this year was the school newspapers that covered it.
I was one of the sports editors for my high school’s newspaper, The Loyalist, and if you thought this year was rough for athletes, it was an absolute rollercoaster for student journalists too. I was one of the people waiting for sports to resume so that my team and I would stop telling our contributors to write about practice. My thoughts soon became akin to the famous Allen Iverson quote, “Practice? We’re talking about practice?!” I’m sure our readers thought the same thing.
Outside of that monotony, we were able to put our own spin on stories. I interviewed four seniors who developed an app aimed at ending sports inequity, and we assigned a multitude of stories on interesting topics, such as the challenges in recruitment, the dilemma for two-sport athletes, and one that discussed freshmen beginning their athletic journeys in such an interesting season.
Once sports did come back later in the year, it was utter chaos for us. Virtually every sport was in session from April to June, which made it pretty difficult to keep up with. On the bright side, there was certainly no shortage of story ideas, as we were able to churn out anywhere from five to seven articles per edition over the course of the sports season.
As far as pushing the paper out, we, like everyone else in the world, worked remotely, publishing articles on our website before putting out our first print edition in April of this year. To be honest, I preferred the online method, but it was nice that we were able to go back to the traditional print edition towards the end of the year. Of course, that came with the learning curve of knowing how to use Adobe Indesign, as well as many challenges that technology provided. The first day we started out on the April issue, NONE of the school laptops worked, and InDesign wasn’t cooperating. Talk about four solid hours of “productivity”.
As time went on and I got a little more familiar with the software, laying the paper out was not as much of a struggle. Unfortunately, if I ever needed to update a page from home, that meant I would have to email the file back to our executives, which is exactly what happened in our final edition. I had to revise so many articles because some varsity teams were playing postseason games during layout weeks, and, in addition, set off a chain of emails to our executives and faculty moderator.
Being a sports editor also meant owning up to mistakes. For our second-to-last edition, I came up with the idea of interviewing members of our school’s broadcast club, which, as I mentioned in a previous article, I was involved in. Our contributor, a freshman who I believed was one of our top writers, was assigned to the story. I was the main pair of eyes that looked over the article, and it seemed fine to publish, meeting our requirements for a story, flowing well, and being, at the time, a well-written article. After the paper was printed, I awoke to an angry email from the club’s moderator, who included an exchange with the contributor and CC’d me, the other sports editors, and our executive staff on it as well. He pointed out “major inaccuracies” in the article, from an incorrect title attribution to the fact that our reporter didn’t interview him or numerous others involved in the club (there were only two people interviewed, the incorrectly-identified “club president” and another freshman). I was stunned at the moderator’s words, and felt I’d be the one from The Loyalist to take the blame, being a member of both clubs. In sorting it out over the next few days, it became a learning experience for me, and lit a fire under me to be better.
Overall, working as a sports editor for The Loyalist was an incredibly rewarding experience. I was able to form bonds with the rest of the executive staff, got to know our contributors better, and helped create amazing editions time and time again. Furthermore, I am honored to announce that I will remain with the paper for my senior year as the Managing Editor for the Online and RepU Division. I will be helping increase our digital presence and overseeing beat writers who contribute to our sports app. I couldn’t be more excited to embark on this new challenge and help make The Loyalist the best high school newspaper in Southern California!
