By Kata Stevens
Outside of the formal conversation regarding high school sports coverage at the 2025 Associated Press Sports Editors summer conference held in Minneapolis in June, panelists and the audience mused over an issue that’s always loud in the prep sports beat: confronting reader feedback. Translation: parent feedback.
“The worst are dance moms,” joked Brad Ungast of the Minnesota Star Tribune, participating from an audience of 15 in the first of two sessions on covering the ever-evolving landscape of high school sports.
Parents and grandparents, the more seasoned and traditional generation, are naturally part of the key demographic when it comes to high schools. But in the interest of expanding the reach, high school sports reporters must adapt their coverage to meet new audiences where they are.
So began the APSE workshop session titled “Keeping momentum in the evolution of HS sports coverage.”
From posting highlights to utilizing community members’ unintentional reportage, creativity is the guiding principle for outlets that have proven excellence on the high school beat. The landscape and its participants have evolved beyond the written word, and while there remains an audience for traditional digital and print stories, innovation is necessary.
“I think what makes good coverage is getting stuff outside the box score,” said Courtney Jacobs, sports editor at the Cape Cod Times. “We know who won, we know who lost, we know who scored. So I try to tell my reporters to get that feature angle. … Find something that you won’t find in the stats.”
Alongside Jacobs were panelists Anna Snyder, then of the Tuscaloosa News, Nick Williams of The Minnesota Star Tribune, and Jeff Perkins of the San Antonio Express-News.
No sports beat is evolving with more haste than high schools, and moderator Tony Maluso of Baltimore Sun Media guided the conversation through the many challenges that face sports departments in their effort to modernize. From the Cape Cod Times, which represents about 17 local area high schools, to the Star Tribune, which juggles more than 200, seeking stories that connect readers with the community comes with challenges.
“I would say what makes a good high school coverage for us (is) being hyperlocal,” Williams said. “Pride goes a long way.”
Snyder, who took home top honors for APSE’s Division D High School Beat Writing category, shared the impetus for her award-winning story, in which she needed to find a ride to a game two hours from Tuscaloosa and ended up on the bus with the team.
“I was going up and down the aisles on the bus to see what they were doing,” she remembered, “and luckily they won, so the ride back was good. But it was something that the readers don’t get to see.”
With so many story opportunities, differentiating from the swell of competitors might not seem challenging. But the stories themselves are just the first level to conquer. The medium through which they’re shared might just be the secret sauce.
Between the journalists on the panel, and their peers in the audience, ideas that ping-ponged through the room included teams of the week, high school fantasy drafts and livestreams of them, and multimedia integration to better involve the athletes in coverage; including social media featurettes interviewing athletes and posting bloopers that appeal to the short attention spans and mediums used by high school students. While certain sports and events are more effectively covered in a visual medium than with words, these initiatives also play into athletes’ personal followings, which can help publications grow their brands. The best work comes when approached with the same intentions the students have when approaching their sport.
“It all comes back to fun. It is that serious, but it’s not supposed to be that serious,” Perkins said. “You never know what’s going to pop off. … Kids have more interesting things to say than any adult, to be quite honest.”
But to get that kind of access, there’s a trust to build with athletic departments, parents, and players. The panel stressed that showing up and laying the groundwork for relationship-building are vital to finding stories that resonate.
“It’s about community, and I cannot stress that enough,” Williams said. “Once you embrace that, the community will embrace you back, and they will keep coming back because they’re like, ‘I know that guy, that guy gets us, that gal gets us.’”
Social media also establishes journalists as personalities that communities can get comfortable with, whether collaborating with community members, utilizing resources from the stands to augment reporting, or creating original content.
“You don’t want to make yourself the story, but you do want to allow yourself to show a little personality in your coverage,” Perkins said. “It goes back to community. The more that you can capture the vibe of a group of people, the more they’ll keep coming back.”
