Photo Credit: Cole YoungOver the last 20 seasons of covering high school football in press boxes and on sidelines, no matter how big of a game I’ve covered there’s always been some other game I’ve wondered about.
Perhaps the biggest (only?) downfall of covering football on Friday nights is that unlike basketball that plays often different times throughout the week, for the most part, 7 p.m. is when it’s all going down all across the country.
So over the last 20 years I’ve first rushed backfirst to my dorm room to find out the other local scores, visited a football message board to see what was happening across the state, called back to the newspaper sports desk to find a score or more recently opened up Twitter.
Inevitably almost every night I’d be scrolling through scores and see a game that jumped out as being one I wish I’d been following all night.
This fall PrepsKC is working to help you keep tabs on what the stories of the night are as they are happening. In addition to the live scoreboard, we’re focusing a portion of our efforts on keeping Twitter followers updated with the stories of the night as they are happening… not three hours later or the next morning.
We rolled out a soft launch of this in Week 1. The focus was simple: Set the scene for the night, making sure our followers knew what the biggest games of the night could be, then by halftime identifying what the games and stories of the night actually were.
Over 75 tweets we were able to find those stories that might have slipped past readers until later. A perfect example of that was when Blue Springs South, who had been 1-19 over the last two years, got out to a quick start on Lee’s Summit.
https://twitter.com/PrepsKC/status/1563329662822260736?s=20&t=x__ic8877PwwOcT_4E_14g
As the night went on, the tightest game ended up being an OT battle between Kearney and Platte County. That’s where our eyes were focused so we made sure others could see it too with a link to the live stats of the game.
When I was an intern at the St. Joseph News-Press I had a reporter tell me the best way to decide what to write about after a game was to imagine you are on the phone with your dad (or whoever). What’s the first thing you mention about the game? That’s your lede.
With what we are trying to do on Friday nights at Twitter, hopefully you’ll feel like we are having a conversation about the games across the city.
Be sure to follow along @PrepsKC
