Smile, everybody. It’s basketball season.
I know that football is the big dog on the prep sports calendar.
High school football games aren’t just games; they’re events. School activities are focused around football games in the fall. Communities rally around their high school football teams.
Maybe everybody likes football. Maybe it’s because football games are just once a week.
Whatever it is, it’s hard not to get caught up in the excitement of Friday Night Football.
But there’s something to be said for basketball, too.
For me, basketball season is special because it’s been part of my life for so long. I played organized basketball from third grade into high school (I actually played more in third grade and watched more in high school, but anyway).
After my playing days were over, I coached basketball. I’ve officiated basketball. And, of course, I’ve reported on basketball.
About the only thing I haven’t done at a basketball game is sing the anthem, which is probably best for everyone.
Last week, I got out to my first basketball game of the winter when I watched Evergreen play Battle Ground in boys basketball.
It’s all part of an attempt to do something we’ve tried to do in the past, and that’s to have The Columbian staff a game involving every varsity basketball team in Clark County in Class 1A and above.
If you include Woodland (just across the county line), that’s 36 teams, boys and girls. So far, we’ve seen 10 teams, so we’re almost one-third of our way to our goal.
But in truth, we’ve already seen just about every team in practice. And we’ve talked with every coach.
It’s all part of something new this winter that will be published in Sunday’s edition of The Columbian — The Winter Prep Sports Preview Section.
It’s an undertaking we haven’t attempted before, but it’s happening this season.
Here’s the back story.
For years, The Columbian has made a special effort to preview the high school football season each fall. Then in the winter, many basketball fans would ask if we would give basketball a similar preview effort.
And for years, the answer was no. And there were many reasons for that.
For one, football is the big dog of prep sports and was worthy of special treatment. Also, with football being in the fall, it made it much easier to work on season previews in the summer when there is very little going on.
But when basketball season starts, often the fall season has not yet concluded. And if work on the basketball season didn’t start until the fall season was completely done, then by the time an exhaustive preview could be completed, the basketball season would be halfway over, which sort of defeats the purpose of the “preview.”
That’s why in past seasons, we kept our basketball previews very concise.
But readers have spoken. After we published our prep football preview sections in past years, they asked that we expand the preview to include other sports. So we did that this fall.
And they said they wanted preview sections for winter and spring, too. So we’re doing that now.
In order to pull this off, we had to make a plan early and get working on it. And that’s exactly what sports editor Micah Rice has done.
As soon as our fall preview section came off the presses in late August, Micah began planning the winter preview section. Reporting on the section began in early November. One local basketball coach even quipped when he was contacted early last month “I thought you guys only cared about basketball when football season was over.”
In the past, that was pretty close to the truth, but not this year. While the coverage of deep playoff runs of our local girls soccer and football teams was handled by reporters Meg Wochnick and Andy Buhler, Micah has been pounding away at the winter preview section.
In that special section, we’ll have stories, photos, key players and schedules for every basketball team in Clark County — even the Class B schools. And we’ll have feature profiles of top athletes in wrestling, boys swimming, gymnastics and bowling, along key athletes and dates to watch.
The final product will have contributions from Meg, Andy and myself, along with our photo staff. But in the end, the bulk of the work will be done by Micah.
So pick up your copy in Sunday’s Columbian. If you like it, let Micah know. I’m sure he’d appreciate the feedback.
But what he’d really appreciate is some time off. Trust me, he’s earned it.
Tim Martinez is the assistant sports editor/prep coordinator for The Columbian. He can be reached at 360-735-4538, tim.martinez@columbian.com or follow his Twitter handle @360TMart.
