...And The Horse You Rode In On

I'll preface this by saying that I'm being a jerk. For tonight, I'm ignoring the mass -- those people who appreciate the local sports coverage the Messenger provides. For tonight, I'm focusing only on the people who have so many gripes and complaints that it's become impossible to keep them inside, the people who wouldn't know appreciation if it scored a first-period hat trick and who wouldn't be able to sleep at night if they hadn't told at least one person how much they sucked that day.

I'm being a jerk. The kind of jerk my father warned me about when I started writing a sports blog. He told me no matter how many nice things I wrote, the only thing I'd ever hear was complaints about anything negative I published. 

"Come on dad! I'm going to write a blog on my own time for no money just so these kids can get even more 'real athlete' treatment. If I spend 800 words talking about how impressed I was with a team they aren't going to only focus on the 50 words I use to talk about their room for improvement."

Dad -1. Ben - 0.

I generally don't mind hearing more criticism than praise. I'm not one of the 1,000 best writers in America and there's plenty I could be doing better.

But this winter has put me over the edge. We hired a new writer for sports at the Messenger. She's incredibly bright and was excited to cover her classmates' games. I found out just a few weeks into the season that players on both varsity basketball teams at HER OWN SCHOOL were making fun of her writing. The very kids we go out of our way to never say anything negative about in print were saying nasty things about one of our writers and one of their classmates. 

Where the hell do these athletes get off making fun of the free press they get? This wasn't criticism, which is totally acceptable. This was petty, crude harassment. So what if there was a mistake about someone's point total? For those who find it necessary to belittle their peers, whether through insecurity or jealousy, we can even the playing field by listing their missed shots, turnovers and rebounds they failed to grab.

The worst offense to date was the revelation of complaints about an apparent lack of MVU girls hockey coverage. Yes, the same MVU team I wrote a glowing piece about a week ago. The one we plastered all over the paper like presidential assassins when it upset BFA. 

The complaint du jour was that we didn't have anything in the Monday edition of the paper about MVU knocking off Essex on the road. The go-to complaint, that we only care about BFA sports, came out early. When some supporters came to our aid and brought up the wild notion that we might not have had something in before deadline, they were dismissed ("It was a Saturday afternoon game, they had plenty of time to meet a deadline!").

It didn't occur to anyone to ask the coach, either (in this instance, the coaches had nothing to do with it, MVU's girls hockey coaches are probably the best in the county at providing us with game info). We generally get the angry phone call when a game isn't covered. Just understand, it's the coach's responsibility to call in a game if we aren't there. If you want more games in the paper, please speak with the team's coach before you bitch to us. 

As an MVU hater (and alumnus, go class of '07!) I couldn't have been happier that we didn't have anything on the game. Then I found out my idiot father, the sports editor, actually did have someone at the game. The Essex newspaper covered the game for us since we do their games in Franklin County. Their small, weekly paper shockingly doesn't have a weekend sports desk, so the coverage had to wait until Tuesday's paper. And to think, I was so close to my goal of eliminating MVU coverage altogether, dammit!

This winter, there are 445 local varsity games scheduled in the span of about 80 days. Take out Sundays with no games, and that's about six games per day. Saturday, there were 11 local varsity games. Of the five hockey games, we elected to cover one. Yep, the aforementioned T-Bird girls.

The options Monday morning for MVU were to scramble and put together A) a few paragraphs with the score, goals and saves, and no photo in Monday's paper, or B) two articles, including a feature on Katie Campbell reaching the remarkable 100-point mark midway through her junior season, and two color photos from the game a whopping 24 hours later. Apparently, Option B was the wrong choice.

I love the BFA/MVU complaints. All year long I get "You guys only care about BFA!" in the left ear and "How come all you cover is MVU?" in the right. I don't even have an ear left for the Enosburg and Fairfax parents (I say parents because the kids are generally happy with what they get, but mommy and daddy think they have John LeClair Jr. in the house and we aren't doing enough to recognize their unbelievable accomplishments). I hope the next person who says "The Messenger only cares about St. Albans" or "Everything is about MVU" finds themselves in front of a Mikaela Flanagan slapshot very soon.

The only folks who should be complaining don't. We often end up covering Richford a little less than our other schools. Unfortunately Richford usually plays fewer games against other Franklin County schools and it's furthest away from most of our staff. But the main thing we hear when we go to Richford is "My kid really loved having his picture in the paper, thank you."

Most kids do like having their picture in the newspaper. And you know what? We like being able to put local athetes in the Messenger. We do as good a job of that as anyone around. We've had people actually complain about only having one or two large, color photos during a season. Take that complaint to the athletes at Burlington, Rutland or CVU and see what kind of reaction you get.

So dad was right. One of the first blogs I did was a piece about a great girls soccer game. I talked about the great things both teams had done then mentioned at the end that I wished one team spent less time focusing on the refs. I was nearly run out of town. All I heard for a month was that I was an ass and why would I even bother writing about kids I "hated". I wrote another piece on a physical game between BFA and MVU and heard a lot more about that piece than the one I wrote about their great rematch. 

I don't expect a pat on the back for the work I do, though I do appreciate the gratitude I often get. What I do expect is our readers to recognize that we go above and beyond what most sports departments do for high school athletes. The big complaint is that you thought we missed one regular season hockey game?!? Call me when we miss a local team winning a state championship. I do mean call me, or e-mail me or send something personal. That's a whole lot more likely to get you an answer to your question about coverage than posting a facebook status about what a shitty job the Messenger does. 

My dumbass sports editor only spends 100+ hours devising a schedule as fair as he can make it (a fair man would spend at least 500!), and is always happy to explain why a game was or was not covered. While you're concerned with your particular team's 20 games or your school's 40 or 80, he is trying to balance coverage of 445 games. If you wonder why there was no story on a game, or no writer/photographer there, send an email to sports@samessenger.com and you'll find out why. Before complaining, find out why you're complaining.

And by the way, while we made sure to get someone to that MVU hockey game in Essex, we didn't get anyone to BFA's home hockey game that night for the first time this year. So let's hear it Comet hockey fans.