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Everyone loses when nobody calls

About five years ago, I got a phone call from a reader informing me that a local baseball team had just won a league championship and was having one of its best seasons in years.

I thanked the reader and expressed surprise because, up to that point, we had heard absolutely nothing from that team.

Not a peep.

Nowadays, that seems to be more of a reoccurring problem and I’m not really sure why. With all the technology available, you’d think it would be easy to contact local media and fill them in with details from a game, but, more and more, we seem to hear from some teams less and less.

For the situation described above, that team went on a lengthy playoff run and we were on-hand to cover it from beginning to end. Still, we were left wondering why no one had contacted us before that point.

I’ve seen it too many times to count: When teams are winning, coaches can’t call fast enough to tell us about their team’s latest victory. But when that same team is in the middle of a losing streak, the phones are silent and it’s as if that team doesn’t exist.

Let me be very clear on this point: This column isn’t to put any particular coach, school, sport or program on blast. There are dozens of coaches who contact us after every game and we’re grateful for all the information we get.

But, if any coach is reading this and feels called out, hopefully this serves as a friendly reminder of sorts.

Whether coaches know it or not, not calling in scores has some lasting consequences:

∫ It hurts us.

Our job is to tell readers what’s going on in Alpena and the surrounding towns. When scores don’t come in, we can’t do that. Our job is essentially to chronicle history in the making, and, when scores aren’t called in, we’re putting together an incomplete version of history.

∫ It hurts the reader.

I’m sure there’s nothing more frustrating for local sports fans than opening the morning paper and looking to see how a team did, only to find a particular score isn’t there.

What it looks like is that The News doesn’t care or The News is lazy.

In almost nine years of covering local sports in this area, I’ve heard just about everything when it comes to coverage of teams or lack thereof. Everything from how we must have vendettas against certain schools or how we must hate certain sports. Heck, we’ve even heard that we don’t cover certain teams enough when I know without a doubt that we cover those teams at least once a week.

I can assure readers that we absolutely care and, when a score isn’t there, nine times out of 10 it’s because we heard nothing from a coach about that game.

∫ It hurts the athletes.

There’s nothing better than covering a game in person and seeing a player have a career night or break a school record. When that happens, it’s a privilege to be able to write about it and preserve that moment in time for the athlete and his or her family to put in a scrapbook somewhere.

But when we can’t be there and no one calls, moments like that go unnoticed. Imagine an athlete having a career game and wanting to tell their kids about it some day while showing them a newspaper clipping. If the score isn’t reported, the athlete never gets that chance.

If that wasn’t enough, when it comes time to pick all-area teams, if we have no record of how a particular team’s athletes did during the season, it’s awfully hard to justify picking a player from that team.

Bottom line: We’re a two-person sports department and, try as we might, we can’t be everywhere at once. There are a lot of days where I wish we had a clone or two helping on the sports desk.

While we’re not perfect, we try to do the best we can every single day to bring you as much of the local sports scene as we can.

For anyone who’s curious, here’s what a typical night looks like for me and News Sports Writer Jonny Zawacki, if we’re both covering out-of-town games:

∫ We cover a game somewhere like Alcona or Rogers City or Hillman or Atlanta. If it starts on time (and, usually, it’s a big “if”), the game is done between 8:30 and 9 p.m. Realistically, most games are done between 9 and 9:30 p.m.

∫ After the game, we have to talk to coaches or players to get quotes for a story.

∫ We have to drive back and, even in the best of conditions, its usually 30 to 45 minutes, depending on the location. So there are a lot of nights where we’re not getting back to the newsroom until at least 10 p.m.

∫ Once we get back, it takes roughly 30 to 40 minutes to look over notes, play our recorders back for quotes, put a story together, edit a photo and write a caption to go with that photo.

∫ Usually, in the middle of editing our photos and writing our stories, phone calls come in and we have to take down the information and then get back to writing. If there are messages from coaches on our answering machines, we get to those once our main stories are done.

If that sounds like a ton of work, that’s because it is. It’s like organized chaos every single night, usually Monday to Friday, especially during basketball season. With so much going on, we have to trust that coaches are going to call their scores in, because, by the time we’re done with everything, if a coach hasn’t called, it’s usually too late to call them and get what we’re missing.

Before I go any further, I know there are extenuating circumstances when it comes to reporting scores. I know that, this time of year, weather plays a big part in teams getting to and from games safely. I know that, in areas with no cell service, sometimes it’s next to impossible to call in scores. Sometimes, a player has to be taken to the hospital and a coach’s first concern after a game is checking on that player to make sure they’re OK. Sometimes, a team runs into transportation issues where a bus breaks down on the way to a game or coming home.

Those are all perfectly acceptable reasons for scores to come in later than usual and, if a score does come in after our deadline, we’ll get it in the next day.

But it seems to me that, in some cases, results are called in depending on whether or not a team wins. For me, that belief is reinforced when we get a list of scores from around the state from our wire service on a given night and I see a local result we don’t have yet. Usually, it’s either a rout or a close loss.

I get it. Losing isn’t fun. After a tough loss, I’m sure the last thing a coach wants is to be reminded of it in the next day’s paper. But not getting a call after a one-point loss or a two-point loss? C’mon. We want to hear from coaches after every single game. In most cases, a quick, five-minute phone call right after the game gets us all the details we need to put something together for the next day.

We live in an area with a lot of athletic talent and some great teams. Behind all that success are coaches, who play an important role in the athletic development of young men and women, working long hours because they’re passionate about what they do.

We love hearing from coaches when teams win and we’re thankful they take a few minutes to get a hold of us.

But we want to hear from coaches when they lose, too. It shouldn’t be conditional. Sports fans around the area deserve to know what the heck is going on with their local teams, whether their favorite team beats an arch rival on a buzzer beater or gets routed by 30 points.

We strive to do the best we can, day in and day out, to bring readers of The Alpena News the very latest and best news about local sports in Northeast Michigan.

With full participation from area coaches, we can be even better.

The sports desk can be reached at sports@thealpenanews.com or 989-358-5694.

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