Athletes of the Week
One of my least favorite parts of my job is selecting "Athletes of the Week" for each of the three major high schools I cover. Every week, as part of a paid advertisement in my sports sections, I select a boy and a girl from West Linn, Lake Oswego and Lakeridge High Schools and provide a sentence or two about them. It's an enormous pain because I have to select them early in the week and, often, they aren't relevant by the time the paper comes out. I usually pick names on a Monday and a basketball player I have named may blow out his or her knee in a Tuesday night game or go 0-16 from the field to cost his or her team the game.
And, as a flagrant procrastinator, I am usually backed up against a wall and am forced to make my selections quickly and send them off in an e-mail. As someone who goes out of his way not to stir the pot in every aspect of my life, my only goal while making these picks is to spread out players from different sports and to make sure that no one gets named more than twice in a single season. As you might imagine, the pickings get pretty slim come playoff time.
"Johnny Johnson scored two points and provided encouragement to his team from the bench in West Linn's 84-31 loss last week."
"Sally Smith did not drown while swimming the 200m freestyle against Clackamas last week."
Needless to say, I don't take these selections seriously or really give them much thought and, in all honestly, I pray each week that they go unnoticed and that I don't get an angry phone call or e-mail from a parent whose kid was, once again, bypassed.
Tonight I was at a doubleheader at Lakeridge of boys and girls basketball and, at halftime of the boys game, it was announced that there would be an awards ceremony. When halftime rolled around, a huge contingent of students lined up at mid-court. First, a small handful of students received academic honors and took their seats. Then, it was announced that the remaining 50+ students on the court were receiving awards for being named the Lake Oswego Review's Athlete of the Week from the beginning of the school year up through yesterday's paper.
I was mortified. There it was. A line 50 people long cheerfully smiling as a monument to my laziness and indifference. They were taking it seriously! Every kid got a gym bag! Now I felt unbelievably guilty for all of those weeks (every week) when I simply mailed it in. Now that I know someone actually cares about what has always been the part of my week that has required the least amount of thought I'm going to have to change my format. I feel like I should take nominations then talk to the finalists' teachers, coaches and athletic director each week ending with a probing 30-minute in-person interview with each candidate.
When the final name was mercifully read, I was relieved that the announcer didn't add "And a special thanks to Matt Sherman of the Lake Oswego Review, sitting right over there. If your kid wasn't out here tonight, he's the reason why." But, on the other hand, I'm the one taking time each week to make these selections. Where's my gym bag?
I know this goes against the tenants of Journalism, not to mention basic morality - but hear me out. If you care very little about this and the parents/players care quite a bit about this, and said parents/players tend to live in wealthier areas, the capitalist thing to do would be to accept "donations for consideration". Of course I'm not suggesting you accept direct bribes, that would be wrong. But you could start a charitable scholarship for these donations to be made for future students in need. Last I checked, Elliott is a future student in need.
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