It's a swim thing, and they don't understand. This picture of one of the boys on the high school team I help coach appeared in yesterday's local paper based on his outstanding performance at the County Swim Meet. The caption under the picture was:
Water Girl
Arggh!
Parents
Former Member
It's probably a combination of the two. Not that I'm making apologies for editors (or reporters, on whose judgement and fact-gathering skills many editors must rely), but you're probably right. Most of them don't know much about swimming or other minor sports. When I was a freelance sportswriter for a time, my first assignment was to cover a volleyball game, and I had no idea what a "sideout" was.
The other thing is that sometimes we have to depend on the willingness of coaches and parents to help us get our facts right, and they're not always reliable. At the paper where I work, we cover one high school and, although we have a good relationship with the school, it's murder getting so much as a roster from some of the coaches at times. Then we either risk running a story that has something wrong, or not running it and getting angry calls from Parent X wondering why we don't write about their child's fantastic season.
I apologize if this sounds like a rant. I mean it all in good fun. :) Just offering my humble $.02 from the other side of the fence.
Adam
It's probably a combination of the two. Not that I'm making apologies for editors (or reporters, on whose judgement and fact-gathering skills many editors must rely), but you're probably right. Most of them don't know much about swimming or other minor sports. When I was a freelance sportswriter for a time, my first assignment was to cover a volleyball game, and I had no idea what a "sideout" was.
The other thing is that sometimes we have to depend on the willingness of coaches and parents to help us get our facts right, and they're not always reliable. At the paper where I work, we cover one high school and, although we have a good relationship with the school, it's murder getting so much as a roster from some of the coaches at times. Then we either risk running a story that has something wrong, or not running it and getting angry calls from Parent X wondering why we don't write about their child's fantastic season.
I apologize if this sounds like a rant. I mean it all in good fun. :) Just offering my humble $.02 from the other side of the fence.
Adam
