The AD stopped me in the hallway with what he clearly thought was a small ask: could the journalism kids cover the winter sports teams? Game stories, some photos, maybe get it up on the school site. Great visibility for the program, he said. He wanted it running in two weeks.
What he didn’t see was everything underneath that ask. Sports writing isn’t the same skill as news writing — it needs its own angle-finding instruction, not just game scores. Photography under gym lighting is its own problem. And none of it means anything without a rubric, because "great coverage" isn’t a grade.
See it on Teachers Pay Teachers — $17.59
I didn’t have a semester to build all of that from separate pieces, so I bundled what I’d already built into one kit: sports writing beyond the box score, sports photography technique, a short-feature rubric with a scored example, photo essay and caption rubrics, and a sportswriter’s training manual tying it together. Six pieces that work as a coordinated unit instead of six things I’d have had to stitch together myself at 10pm.
Two weeks was never enough time to build a sports desk from nothing. It was enough time to hand students something that already worked.
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