Eagles Grab First Region Football Victory

Thanks so much for your comments, and more importantly, for reading the newspaper.

First of all, please understand that we're a very sparsely staffed news organization that's spread razor thin trying to cover all of the high schools in our area. A comment was made that someone "wondered if I was actually attending the games."

Well, as both Coach Caputo and Coach Savage in Commerce can tell you, I'm not able to attend every game, because I actually cover both high school programs. I have to pick which game to cover each week, depending on scheduling, distance, if it's a region game, or a game with region or playoff possibilities.

That means that when I cover either school in person, I'm generally unable to cover the other at the same time (although I have driven from one to the other when both have had home games - try doing that and keeping everything straight in your head!). When I'm there in person, my main task is to take as many photos as I can to make sure that, on a week I'm not able to attend that team's game, I can make sure I have photos to run with our stories.

That means that much of the information I use comes from my own hastily scribbled notes, and (for the most part) from the stats sheets that the coaches are kind enough to send to me.

Last year, while everyone was still getting situated, sometimes getting the information was a little hit or miss. This year, the coaches have done a great job in getting me the stats, but we're still getting everything ironed out. When I have had the defensive stats, I've tried to make sure they get in. But if I don't have those stats......well, I can't just make them up.

I have the earliest deadline of all the MainStreet newspapers (The Commerce News is the main source for East Jackson coverage, with the Jackson Herald being secondary). I generally have to have my stories done and my pages in by about 4:30 p.m. Tuesday afternoon. When you consider that some teams don't have their stats available until noon on Tuesday (which is not generally the case with East Jackson, thank goodness!), you can see how things can get tight.

So, as you can see, with more schools to cover than we can ever possibly hope to have people to cover in the stat-by-stat way we'd like to, that puts us in a situation where we have to essentially do the best job we can with what we have to work with.

When you add to that the fact that we don't have the space in our pages this year that we did in East Jackson's inaugural year (we've had to essentially write shorter stories on all sports to compensate out of sheer necessity - two weeks ago, I had exactly a page and a half in the Commerce News to put eight stories on four different sports from two high schools, with photos), I'm basically left to honestly do the best that I can from week to week.

I'd love to mention everything done by every member of the team. I want folks to be happy with what they read, the coverage they get, and the way they are represented. Certainly that's the plan I laid out when I took the job a year and a half ago.

But, as John Lennon once said, life is what happens while you're busy making plans.

Thanks again for reading and buying the paper, and as I said, I'll put everything in the story that I get on the stat sheets from the coaches. They're busy folks, trying to not only win football games, but also to educate your kids (which I've always put ahead of football, to be honest), so I try not to pester them too much. They're good folks, and they'll get the information to me as they can.

Thanks, and may the God of your choice bless you and keep you.

-Brandon