Behind the Headlines

There are many successful youth sports teams in central Kentucky (softball, baseball, AAU basketball, etc.), and each one is proud of its accomplishments. Fortunately, our area is filled with quality coaches and young athletes. Each time a team wins a city tournament, a city league regular season title, a traveling tournament or another of the many events held each summer, it provides that team with many memories.

The Herald-Leader generally shies away from covering youth sports. Typically, we begin covering teams and athletes at the prep level. There are many reasons for this. It is a natural starting point. Also, it is my feeling that we are a society that has blown sports out of proportion, and part of our job should be to help keep that in perspective and not go overboard with adulation of sports accomplishments at a young age.

Our Communities section has always been open to acknowledging local team accomplishments. But in Sports, we rarely cover youth basketball, football and soccer. We have made an exception for the 12-year-old Little League Baseball World Series. Traditionally, Little League recognizes the 12-year-old group as the premier age.

In past years, we have covered Lexington teams in the Cal Ripken World Series if the team reached the United States title game. If the team won that and reached the world championship game the next day, we covered that game. That required having a reporter on call to fly to Aberdeen, Md., the morning of the game.

For the first time this year, the Cal Ripken organization had two World Series sites. Upon checking into it, we learned that the organization was promoting its Aberdeen tournament as the premier event. It was the televised tournament and also the one that maintained a world title.

Cal Ripken also held another World Series tournament in Arkansas. It happened that different Lexington leagues sent a team to each one. We made the decision that if a Lexington team advanced deep into the tournament, we would cover the Aberdeen event because it was the one the Cal Ripken organization itself recognized as its premier event.

During both tournaments, we collected results from calls, Web sites and other papers to write roundups on how the local teams were doing. We knew that if the Southeastern team reached the Aberdeen finals, we were prepared to send a reporter. We found out Thursday night that the team had won and reporter Jen Smith took a plane out of Lexington on Friday morning to staff a 5:30 p.m. game.

Meanwhile, South Lexington won the tournament in Arkansas. The tournament was a national one without a world game. We gathered information from several sources and wrote a story that appeared at the top of the third page of the Sports section.

As it turned out, we covered only one game in Aberdeen. The Southeastern team lost in the U.S. title game. Because Cal Ripken had made this its premier event, and because we flew someone to Aberdeen, we played the story on the Sports front. Of course, because of deadlines, we had to decide where to play the story before the game was over.

Our decisions did not sit well with everyone. Some people with Southeastern were upset we only staffed the one game they lost. Those at South Lexington felt slighted because we staffed the Southeastern game. Some fans at another local league of another age, which also won a national event, accused us of favoring south Lexington teams. Then, of course, there were several local girls’ softball teams that played in a World Series…. 

It is great that our local teams are so successful. It certainly makes for an interesting summer.

Gene Abell
Sports Editor