Sports Editor or Football Editor?

The following is a copy of a letter I just sent to the local paper. I'm not holding my breath waiting for a reply.

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Mr. Barrera,

During a quick perusal of the Friday Daily Indpendent I found on the front page two advertisements for tonights BHS away football game. Then once I got to the sports section I found eight pages of sports coverage. As a sports fan I think this level of coverage is great. Except, those 8 pages consisted of 4 and a quarter pages of local football, one and a quarter pages of NFL football, a full page of Cal Berkley college football and a full page of NASCAR coverage. That left only one half a page for all the other sports. That space was split between two articles - one on Major League Baseball and one article on the BHS tennis team. Over half the coverage of the local high school football programs were about games that haven't even been played yet. The four and a quarter pages of football coverage consisted of four articles all written by you, the DI Sports Editor. There were also 11 photographs most of which are supplied by you or just listed as "contributed."

Mr. Barrera, I think it is time for you to get out of the football stadiums and start covering all the sports being played in the Indian Wells Valley. We don't need pages of coverage of football games that haven't been played yet when there are so many other sporting events being competed by our local youth. There has been no mention that the BHS volleyball team freshmen lost a close match to Kern Valley High School JV team on Wednesday, or that the BHS Varsity Volleyball team beat Kern Valley High School Varsity team 3-1. Do you know that Thursday evening the BHS JV and Varsity volleyball teams also won matches against Rosamond High School to continue their undefeated seasons? Are you aware that the five local middle school's have 18 girls volleyball teams that have been practicing for weeks and will start competition with each other next Monday? What about tennis, cross country, golf and all the other club and independent youth sports being playing in our area?

Mr. Barrera its time to get out of the football stadium and start reporting all the sports being played in town. There are many fine young athletes in this valley who are pouring their hearts and souls into the games they love to play and its time to stop ignoring them or pretending they are not as important as football. I understand that sometimes you need to rely on submissions from the organizers of these other athletics events for your information. Additionally, BHS has made tracking other sports events more difficult by removing any mention of sports other than boys soccer, basketball and football from the athletics section of their website. But since you were able to generate over four pages of news about football surely you could generate a little coverage of some of the other local sports. After all you are the Sports Editor, not the Football Editor.