Yeah, yeah, I know what you’re thinking.
“Who’s the old guy with the glasses?”
Well, it’s the start of another high school sports year. A time for change. A time for a fresh start.
I also thought it was time for a new column photo.
Actually, I’ve been meaning to get a new photo taken. The old one was 10 years old.
My wife and daughter — who have been nagging me for a while to get a new picture — say this one looks “better.” I’m not sure. I think it makes me look 10 years older.
But this fall The Columbian is putting a new face on its high school sports coverage, so it seemed the right time to get a new picture.
One change you may have already noticed. We are more than a week into high school football preview features on all local Class 4A and 3A teams.
We would have liked to have features for all local teams, but there just wasn’t enough time, space and staffing to handle features on 19 local football teams.
We will have feature stories on a selected 2A team (with capsules on all local 2A teams) on Thursday and then one on a selected 1A/B team (with capsules for all) on Friday.
But the good news for the small schools is that this season The Columbian will attempt to staff all football games played in Clark County involving 4A, 3A, 2A and 1A teams this season.
We are pulling together a team of correspondents who will head out across the county each Friday to provide you with in-game updates, complete stats and reports from each game this season.
Go to www.360preps.com for up-to-date information on high school football on Friday, and all week long. Go there to find our high school sports blog, where you can also preview capsules on every high school game each week (and that includes The Columbian’s picks).
And keep your eye on www.360preps.com. We’re planning on a new look on the site this fall that will make it easier for you to find standings, schedules, scores, stats and information on your favorite high school.
You can also get in-game updates on our Twitter account at www.twitter.com/360preps. We have some 640 followers on Twitter. Also, preps reporter Paul Valencia has a twitter account at www.twitter.com/360PaulV. He had 197 followers as of Sunday afternoon. And I have my Twitter account at www.twitter.com/360TMart, although I only have 73 followers.
You can find us on Facebook too at www.facebook.com/360preps. We started that account just a couple of weeks ago, and we only have 25 “likes” but we would like some more.
If you go to our Facebook page, you can vote each week on which prep football teams will win. In fact, if you go there now, you can vote on Week 1 matchups.
And The Columbian will be partnering with our friend Bryan Levesque and www.gshlfootball.com to provide comprehensive coverage of high school football in Southwest Washington this fall.
All in all, it looks to be an exciting fall for prep football and The Columbian.
Now, if I can only do something about the column photo.
Tim Martinez is the assistant sports editor/prep coordinator for The Columbian. He can be reached by phone at (360) 735-4538 or email at tim.martinez@columbian.com.
