Don't sweat it when it comes to sports writing

Lauren's nerves had her sweating profusely as she turned the corner into the gym at San Diego Mesa College and saw the basketball team warming up. With little knowledge outside of the basic mechanics and rules of the sport, her nightmare of covering an athletic activity for the first time gnawed at her core. She sat on the hard wooden bench, feeling as if she had just sat down to wait for execution. She watched as the two teams ran from one end of the court to the next. The constant drib-le, drib-le, drib-le of the basketball pounding in rhythm on the ground, counting down to the moment where she would need to sit down in front of her laptop to write the story. Butterflies mangled her insides as she thought "Why did I agree to cover this?"

While many people join college newspapers specifically to cover sports, others are thrown into it against their will. Fortunately, the following advice from my limited experience with sports writing may help to keep you out of the latter group.

1. Remember to include the score. IN THE LEDE.

You wouldn't bury the most important fact of a news article in the last paragraph of your story, so when it comes to writing a sports article you need to remember that THE most important fact tends to be the score and any high turning points of the game.

2. KISSS - Keep it Simple Stupid and short.

The sad fact of the matter is that the majority of readers going through the sports section only want to know the score (in your lede) and basic stat details about how certain key players do. People don't want an overly detailed description of what happened at every single minute of the game. By writing your article in a simple, "stupid" and short format, it will relay the information that the readers want without taking up unnecessary layout space.

3. Avoid using cliches.

Almost every basketball coach or player upon asking how they won a game is going to say "we gave 110 percent." In response to a question about how Suzie Q finally beat her own long jump record, she's going to say "Practice, practice, practice." And it can be horribly easy to say John Smith "had his game face on." 

What I say to all of these is that they are outdated cliches that don't even belong remotely close to your sports article. Ask interview questions that are difficult to respond to in this fashion, or ask follow up questions to get more in depth and usable answers.

4. Don't use player numbers.

If a reader wants to a player's jersey number, he or she can look it up on an online roster. Don't waste space and interrupt the flow of your article by including jersey numbers.

5. Study up on the sport's rules.

While it is unnecessary to know all of the complexities dealing with the sport that you're covering, you should know what it means when the brown, leather pointy-ended thing gets carried past the last line on the field (we call this a "touchdown," for the record).  Using a Wikipedia to gain a little basic knowledge ahead of time can do wonders to how focused you are one the game/match/meet, which will improve your writing.

Do you know what these funny red balls are? If not, check out the rules of Cricket to see how they're used. Photo credit: Swamibu

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