By John McCallum
Editor 

Don't look now, but fall sports aren't very far away

Crunch Time

 

Last updated 8/10/2017 at 12:04pm



In past Crunch Time columns I’ve referred to this time period of late August as the dog-days of sports, that time when sports pages and coverage consist of Major League Baseball and that’s it. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

In reality, for those of us in the sports coverage business, it’s the calm before the storm. And we can see those storm clouds gathering on the horizon — not that there’s anything wrong with that.

With the non-waiver deadline passed, MLB’s postseason races are heating up, and will get hotter (hopefully as the weather gets cooler) as the month progresses. If you follow the Seattle Mariners or any other American Legion team, you’ll know filiing the two wildcard spots is the most contested, with just about everybody except the Chicago White Sox capable of mounting a successful playoff charge.

But as baseball lunges towards its finale, other sports are beginning to crank it up. Namely football, with both NFL and college teams now in fall camps. Indeed, the NFL has begun those most exciting of all contests — preseason games.


You know, where starters maybe — maybe — play a down or two and the remaining 45-50 minutes are consumed with essentially watching a job interview — a full-contact interview. Yawn, but enough to wet most sports junkies appetites with thoughts of possibilities.

Locally, Eastern fans have reason for excitement as the Eagles are again ranked in the top 10 to start the Football Championship Subdivision season —coming in at No. 5. It’s becoming routine, a good thing, but not one to disregard and forget the hard work that has brought the program this far, and continues under new management.


That annual news got an additional charge of excitement as the EWU women’s soccer team’s continuing improvement under head coach Chad Bodnar also got a seal of endorsement as Big Sky coaches made them preseason favorites to win the conference regular-season title.

Finally, the arena we here at the Cheney Free Press hang our hat on, high school sports, is just around the corner. Football fall camps open first, with Cheney and Medical Lake beginning practices Aug. 16, followed by soccer, cross country, volleyball and in Cheney’s case, girls swimming, about a week later.

Some programs have serious thoughts of regular and post season success, and all are hoping to do the best they can. Hopefully, their respective communities will support them along the way.

One of the things we’ve prided ourselves at the mighty CFP is our high school sports coverage. We do more than report on the more well-known sports, and provide eight-point, agate coverage for the rest.

We have always sought to bring to our readers attention as much as possible of the athletic pursuits of our student-athletes, and we intend to continue that tradition through stories and photos. But this will be the first year that we will be doing that with a smaller staff, and in that, we need support from the community.

We won’t be able to be at as many games, meets and matches as we have in the past — and that likely includes some home contests. We encourage fans, parents, friends and even fellow student to not be shy about sending us photos — and we’ll even give you that valued photo credit.

The smaller staff will also limit our ability to get information from coaches, so we will be looking to them and fans to be a bit more proactive in getting us the tools we need to provide quality coverage. After all, this is a community newspaper, and it takes a community to make it work.

John McCallum can be reached at jmac@cheneyfreepress.com.

Author Bio

John McCallum, Retired editor

John McCallum is an award-winning journalist who retired from Cheney Free Press after more than 20 years. He received 10 Washington Newspaper Publisher Association awards for journalism and photography, including first place awards for Best Investigative, Best News and back-to-back awards in Best Breaking News categories.

 

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