Everyone has a right to be proud of their kids or family members who play sports, or participate in any school activity. It’s great to see kids putting forth effort to improve themselves and their teams. I received some emails this past week from some frustrated parents who felt their kids were not getting “enough recognition” in the local newspapers, and also the daily papers.

I love it when kids do well. I love it when myself or one of the sportswriters can be at a game and witness the events, take some pictures and write up a good story highlighting their success. However there are just too many sports and too many teams playing to even come close to covering them all. At the beginning of the season we sent out emails to all the A.D’s asking that all coaches provide the local papers with stats from their games.

We have had very few coaches respond to that request. Some coaches have been very good at communicating their stats to us and we appreciate them. Some have not been so good and some have shown they just don’t care. We will continue to cover as many local school events as we possibly can with a limited amount of employees. I would personally like to see games every night, high school sports to me is a great way to fight off stress.

I like watching our local kids perform well, it’s great when they win or fight a tough battle to the end. Our sportswriter for the Tyler Star News is one of Sistersville’s great athletes from the past. He is an ex-high school football coach and ex-college running back. He knows all about kids, he was a school teacher, he’s a parent, a grandfather and a great guy.

Just like the rest of us he’s got a full plate trying to keep up with a busy season. I went back into our archive books to see how we were doing compared to past years from the 60’s to the present. What I found out might surprise some of you. From the 1950’s to present day the sports coverage from the local papers has improved dramatically.

Back then if you got a one paragraph write up a couple time a season you were lucky. Also pictures of regular season games were not an every week thing. Playoffs and state championship teams received great coverage. I know everyone wants to have their teams covered and we do as well. If you are a parentt or grandparent and you want to send us some pictures or information we will be happy to use what we can. Feel free to send some stuff our way. We will be out every week covering something almost every night. We’re proud of our school kids at every school and we wish them all the best.

Post season is right around the corner, and we hope to see some of our local teams make the cut. When they do we will be right there covering those games as well. Fall sports season is by far the hardest as we have six schools to cover and 25 different teams not including middle school.

This weeks schedule goes something like this; five football games; two cross country meets, and nine volleyball matches. Last week there were twice this many teams in action. The fall season is winding down and in a couple weeks we will be in tournament action for volleyball with football post season just about a month away.

If you plan on playing winter sports they will be starting practice before long. Make sure you get a physical if you haven’t had one.