Coaches unresponsive to student newspaper staff

The Prospector, as small as it is, staff struggles to bring you sports columns, sports news and information on the wins and losses of all the Yuba College sports teams for every issue.

However, bringing The Prospector readers anything related to sports is a task dreaded by all our reporters. Before the staff starts working on a new paper, we divide all the stories amongst the reporters. Unfortunately, every reporter has to cover a sport.

You may ask yourself, “Why is reporting on sports such a dreaded task?” The answer is the coaches. Though most of the coaches are nice people, and they are doing a good job coaching the teams, they seem to have a complete apathy toward any publicity in our student newspaper.

We at The Prospector cannot understand this. Our paper is specifically for the students and staff of Yuba College and is ideal for bringing a crowd to games and raising the overall morale of the teams. Yet, when reporters repeatedly call a coach, leaving messages with numerous ways for the coach to call them back, there is almost never a response.

When I was trying to write an article about the Track and Field team, I had to go to a practice just to find the coach. When I asked for a roster, the coach told me there wasn’t one. When I asked for a record of the times each team member had at their last meet, he told me he did not have them. When I asked why he didn’t return my numerous calls, he said that he never checks his phone on campus but gave me his personal phone number.

Later I needed information on how the track team faired at their last meets, so I called the number he gave me. I left numerous messages again, but once again received no response. The coach did eventually respond, but it was a week later and the newspaper was already printed, so it was too late to put in any information from him.

This reporter thinks the Track and Field coach is a nice person but without being able to get any information from him, how am I supposed to inform the students at Yuba College about how their Track and Field team is doing? This story is not uncommon. Several reporters covering other sports have stories very similar to this one.

In fact, the coach for Track and Field is one of the easier coaches to find since he will talk to reports during practice. Some coaches won’t talk to reporters during practice because they are too busy, but they also will not find time to talk to reporters when there is no practice.

For instance, another reporter, was trying to cover baseball. She called and e-mailed the coach several times. She recieved an email, once again after the paper had already been printed, telling her that the coach was unavailable unless she called his personal phone. She was never able to talk to him and had to look for scores online and in The Appeal-Democrat.

The question is how are any of the students or reporters supposed to care about our sports teams if the coaches don’t even seem to care if their teams get coverage?

We at The Prospector are tired of trying to get a hold of coaches and believe that the coaches should be trying to get a hold of us. We wish the coaches for all Yuba College sports teams cared enough about their players, students and fellow staff to at least call back reporters so we can report on sport issues.

Let’s face it, the overall morale on campus is low. There is almost no student involvement. Students are complaining that there is nothing to do. The Prospector would like to show you the success and/or struggles of a team that represents you. Maybe you would at least go to a game, but due to the complete apathy on the behalf of several coaches, we hardly expect any students to care about the teams here.

So, once again, nothing to report in sports at Yuba College.