Steely Dan wrote:I see the Wildcats taking this one by about 20-25 points. No insult to the spartans, the Wildcats are that good.
That could be one of the most unintelligent statements I've ever read. Let me tell you how good the Spartans are. Undefeated in Alaska, undefeated in the TVC, and it's not changing on the 7th!
Last edited by Spartan4Life on Mon Jan 05, 2009 9:40 am, edited 1 time in total.
That is why you play the game. All of this conjecture is nothing but a bunch of bull. Question my intelligence and insult me after the game is over, if you wish.
I have to disagree with SteelyDan on this one. I believe Alexander will come out on top. Waterford has a tremendous group of young women. But the ladies of Alexander are a better ball team, in my humble opinion. I think the lady spartans will show everyone on the 7th why they deserve to be at the top. Good luck lady spartans!
Spartan4life, the Spartans are not undefeated overall. They lost at the convo to 2X defending state champs, Riverview by 8 points. They stand at 7-1 overall, and imo, they will be standing even higher after wednesday.
Here's wishing the Lady Spartans good luck on Wednesday at Waterford. This is going to be a tough game but I do believe that with the depth of your team, you will come out of their a winner. Continue to play with determination and with the desire to win. That is what got you a trophy in Alaska and it will put you on top here in Ohio.
Some make it sound like the teams in Alaska were no competition for the Lady's. If that was the case, they would have blown them out of the water. (snow) lol.....They were very tough team and it was a great experience for the Ladies, not just off the court but also on the court.
Keep it up Ladies!!!! You are champions...Keep rolling!!!!
They need to change the name of the Athens Messenger to the Alexander Messenger, since they only report on Alexander sports, especially their girls sports programs, and their football program.
I'm not going to do the research, but I'd really like to see Kevin Wiseman fess up to the volume of Alexander sports programs the Athens Mess has covered, versus the other programs (particularly, anything that he has written.)
It has been absolutely ridiculous. I can think of one Athens County girl's sports program who played three games since Christmas, and have gotten almost ZERO press from the Mess. They got one sentence in this past Saturday's paper, (from staff reports), of their loss. Oh, no mention of their two wins in the last five days. However, once again, the Spartans travel to Alaska, and they get multiple articles about their trip, and a friggin' front page headline about their "trip" in Sunday's paper.
You guys are right. Nobody wants to read about a girls basketball team that leaves Christmas mourning to travel 12 hrs to play ball in Alaska having the time of their lives. Nobody wants to read about the State Championship the girls volleyball team won, its just the first high school championship in alot of years 20 or more. Nobody will want to read about this game with Waterford or saturday's game with Fed.Hock. What is Wiseman thinking? About the Waterford game should be a great game.
I'm sure it will get more coverage then any other girls game in the messenger. Lets face it the Messenger is pitiful when it comes to sports. I was reading today's paper on Trimble and Athens and on Federal Hocking and Wheelersburg. The articles were on like page 6 but you had to turn to page 10 to finish them scanning past the comics and the classifieds. There was a box score on the Federal game but no box score on the Athens game. This happens all the time. Please Messager put the box scores after each game and not on the next day which happens also and keep all the sports together instead of four pages apart. If the Athens News would print sports I'd never buy a Messenger. I really only pick up the messenger to see the sports and I'm usally disappointed. Like it or not most people in the reading area are picking it up for the sports period and they just do a terrible job at it. I'm not sure how they make it, have you notice the lack of advertising in it.
I was always told if I wasn't a car mechanic, then don't try and fix someone's engine or try and change their oil.
I am willing to bet that us posters on web sites sitting at home on our personal computers have absolutely no idea how sports articles are put in newspapers, including the Messenger. Do they get all the space they need to just put all the stories they want or are they given a certain, limited amount and have to work with it? Do they have multiple reporters that can cover all five Athens County high school teams and a division I college?
I believe the messenger has 3 sports writers, 3 guys covering 5 schools, boys & girls athletics - AND - a Division I college team and its mens & women's sports and designing pages ... that's incredible or impossible - whichever way you wanna look at it.
I honestly do not believe Alexander has been favored in any way over other schools when it comes to the local paper ... EXCEPT ... when its volleyball team brought home the first state championship in Athens County in over 25 years! They deserved the attention, they deserved every minute, every second of glory for that achievement. Other than that, Nelsonville-York, Athens, Alex, Fed Hock, Trimble all get covered .... i always figured since it was the Athens Messenger, then the Athens Bulldogs would dominate the sports section (which was kind of true in the 80's and early 90's, maybe even before that, I'm just not old enough to know.) I do know when I played for Athens in 1991, 1992, 1993, every thursday our starting football starting line-up was in the messenger along with the team we were matched-up with that friday ... No other area team got that kind of coverage ... I have just noticed in the past 5 or 6 years or so that the other county teams started getting equal coverage .... Some sports sections in other parts of the state or mid-west cover mostly its area teams which are winning or have successful programs generally - I see no bias what so ever in the messenger .... the bigger games get attention, sure, they're supposed to .... I seem to remember the Fed Hock - Waterford girls game @ WATERFORD was in the paper the next day; that is like an hour and 15 minute drive and completely out of county but got covered.
Basically - I would like to see someone dig up the stats on area teams and how many games of theirs were covered in the messenger since sept 1st ... (minus the Alex volleyball because of course they had a bunch, they were the only team in the area playing for like two weeks!) I bet each school has had just about the exact number of articles written about its athletic teams and their games if you include football, volleyball, girls basketball and boys basketball into the equation.
BTW ... I liked the Alaska article about Alexander, it was something different than what I usually read in the Messenger or the Columbus Dispatch & the fact they won and beat a team that was considered another states finest teams or one of them anyway - that's great, that makes for a good story and good reading as opposed to let's say, 2 county teams that haven't won 4 games between them playing on a freezing cold Wednesday night somewhere ...
The messenger must hire more reporters then. Get the people to get the job done. Cross train them so that when there isn't enough sports they can report on other things going on in the paper. If they are short on other reporters then hire more to get all the news in the County. Maybe if they had enough reporters to get the job done then they would increase their circulation. I mean look at it the paper is mostly classifieds and comics each day. Also there is no call for not having the box score from a game on the same day if a reporter was covering the game. I don't only have a problem with the sports section. Let's face it all the articles they do on a certain man and woman that travel to Iraq and protest petland and everything else coming or going or all the stupid articles about the Chauncey. I mean every time they cover Chauncey it's basically the same wording like the just cut and paste from a previous article. They should look to maybe change management.
Well enough from me on this issue back to sports and Alexander wins by 4 and look for a full page report on it and maybe on the front page and probably mentioning the Alaska trip again in the article(which was a great trip for the Spartans).
If I was a bettin' man, I'd say that Wiseman will show up himself to cover the varsity games this coming Saturday in beautiful downtown Sturt. I have not seen him at one Fed Hock game yet, so I'd say he will show himself this weekend. Of course, Alexander will be playing Federal Hocking, so go figure........
And 93 Bulldog. Thanks for your post. That explains part of the problem, however, it does not explain why nothing gets written up in the paper when the coaches call in and leave stats and information about an away game. Heard from the Boy's coach that this has happened more than once.
93 Bulldog - We folks at Fed Hock do appreciate your efforts to cover the games you have been able to make, and your support on this website as well.
