Underwater hockey is among several unusual sports that could yield stories this summer.

Once high school sports conclude at the end of the month, what’s left to cover? Far more than one can imagine. At some newspapers, the summer is a time to recover from an exhausting prep season. But let’s not forget all the ripe sports stories ready to be plucked. Summer is a great time to reflect, report and write some amazing stories. Here are some possibilities.

• How difficult is it for a coach to relax during the summer? Find a coach who is traveling to some exotic place, such as Costa Rica, in order to soar across rain forests on tree lines. Or find a coach who volunteers at a local charity. Or even a coach who relaxes by planting a garden – perhaps, you can have some relaxing conversations as he works the garden that reveals this person’s philosophy on life and coaching sports. Away from school, coaches are finally able to unwind, which means they might be able to speak more candidly. Hang out with a coach or two and learn a little about the challenges of coaching, and why they might need the summer to decompress.
• Head out to a local road race. At these 5K and 10 K races, you’re going to find more stories than you’ll have time to write. The person who started running after having had a heart attack, the person who runs to honor another. The 80-year-old runner who started running after retirement. Or the person who always finishes last but still loves the camaraderie. There are far better stories than these at most road races, if you are willing to speak with race directors and just hang out among the runners.
• Head out to a local lake or river. Find out what’s biting. Eventually, you might learn the answer is you – and that the fishermen are just as interested in reeling in you in order to tell some tales. Listen and you’ll probably find some gems. Maybe, you can even head out in a boat for several hours with a fishermen or two. If nothing else, you’ll get in some fishing and some good conversation. But I’d be shocked if you didn’t also land a pretty good story.
• Go watch some AAU or youth basketball games, where you can focus on local prep players. See how they are doing. You can even write some featurized game stories on the games. You can do the same at AAU track meets, junior golf events, or pretty much any other sports event taking place in the area. Speak with HS coaches, check AAU websites, or just head out to local sports centers to learn more about sports schedules.
• If you live along the coast, check out local surfing events that should yield some interesting stories. Bring the sun screen, because, as you should tell your editor, this event could take all day.
• Head to the local bowling center. Yup, bowling. Youth leagues are very popular during the summer months. Talk with the center owners and pros in residence to learn more about the kids, unusual performances and trends. There are far more stories in these league than one can imagine. Really.
• On a more serious note, evaluate coaching for youth sports, particularly travel baseball and softball, where some adults believe they are managing at the professional level and not guiding 10 and 12-year-old girls and boys. As a former travel coach, I was shocked by the language and approach used by some opposing coaches. I once watched a coach berate a 10-year-old catcher after she allowed a few pitches to skip by her. He marched out there and made the girl take off her catching gear in front of everybody before she was sent to the bench. Not a single parent on this other team confronted this coach after the bawling girl walked to the dugout. Chronicle moments like this, speak with numerous coaches, interview umpires, and league officials, as well as sociologists, psychologists and other researchers to learn how and why some coaches act like dictators. Would make for an illuminating investigative piece, if you are willing to spend the time at the ball fields.
• You might also address abusive coaches at the collegiate level, where Texas Tech’s Mike Leach and others are starting to get dismissed for such behavior.  Thanks, Mark Grabowski, for this story about coaching abuse.
• Head out to a local dragway or dirt track, where you can find countless stories. Besides covering some races, you can also track down profiles on mechanics and drivers, follow up on fatal accidents, or just learn about the culture surrounding these smaller tracks. Could make for some interesting Saturday nights.
• Make Little League and youth softball a regular beat, as Florida Today has. You’ll have far more ideas than time to cover stories such as this one on a 69-year-old man who has coached for 34 years.
• Swimming will be wildly popular again this summer, thanks to the 2012 Summer Olympics; however, the sport is always active at pools across the country. Check how the local swim clubs are doing, learn how swimmers are faring, and find out whether new training techniques, innovative swim wear or some other trend is affecting the sport. For example, have local swim clubs grown since Michael Phelps’ historic performance in the 2008 Olympics, or do the numbers typically swell during any Olympic year? Don’t forget to check on the older, or Masters, swimmers as well.
• Quidditch is no longer reserved just for Harry Potter and his fictional friends at Hogwarts. More than 700 muggles recently competed in the fourth annual Quidditch World Cup. Like society, sports evolve and grow. Investigate these obscure, or unusual, sports being played in your area. Besides throwing quaffles, folks in your town might also be playing kronum, octopush, or hantis.
• Let’s not forget stories on Tough Mudder, which holds its rigorous events across the country. To understand Tough Mudder, think road running on an obstacle course. If you can’t find an interesting story during one of these events, you’re not really trying.
• Duck into a dodgeball tournament, especially if you live near Chicago, where the Midwest Dodgeball Championships are held in late June.
• You might even pull off the road to watch and talk with kids or adults playing Wiffle ball. Sports stories do not always have to be about a competition certified by a state high school association, professional league or national organization. The best stories transcend the games themselves. Check out the Best American Sports Writing series to read stories that offer perspective both inside and outside the lines.

Please, offer your own ideas or links in the comments section below. Have fun this summer.

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram covered Hamilton's 4 homers from all angles.

Inexperienced sports journalists tend to start at the beginning when writing game stories, offering information about the early innings before the key late-inning rally or about a play in the first quarter instead of the game-changing play in the final minutes.

Or they might instead offer a very general overview or some personal commentary.

In class last month, my students used information from a football game between South Florida and Kansas to write a game story. Two key plays led to USF’s upset victory – an interception with 41 seconds remaining that led to a 43-yard game-winning field goal as time expired. Several students focused more on total points scored in the game (71) or on total yardage, instead of on the key plays. Of those who did focus on these two key plays in the opening graphs, most then reverted to the opening quarter in subsequent paragraphs instead of going back to describe the interception and the plays that led to the field goal.

Unless the first quarter is decisive or includes an amazing play, put this information toward the end of a game story, if at all. Same goes for the opening quarters for basketball, the initial innings for baseball, the first period for hockey, or the opening holes in golf. Mostly, focus on key plays down the stretch first — and then work backward from there.

Attribute this to ingrained traditional narrative techniques where one begins a story in the beginning before building to climactic events and the denouement. But, in sports journalism, that is rarely the way one writes a game story. Instead, sportswriters need to focus first on key plays, significant trends, and remarkable stats.

More than anything, sports writers need to find a storyline to wrap around these plays, stats and trends. Take, for instance, several stories written about Josh Hamilton’s four home runs for Texas last night. It would be easy to state that Hamilton hit four homers before describing each one. A good reporter digs deeper, tying an event in a game to a storyline. That’s what USA Today’s Bob Nightengale did, explaining how Hamilton’s spectacular performance creates a dilemma for the Rangers: Do they sign the oft-injured Texas outfielder or do they allow one of the game’s best players to walk away during free agency?

The AP’s David Ginsburg, meanwhile, focuses first on Hamilton’s final home run by interviewing Baltimore pitcher Darren O’Day who sure the hell would have liked that final 0-2 pitch back. “Worst pitch of my life,” O’Day said. Later in the story, Ginsburg notes some other performances and details the Rangers’ strong start this season. But that information is secondary. When you cover an event where something spectacular happens, fully dive into that subject.

At times, you might also find a more subtle game-changing play, such as a slide that breaks up a double play in the middle innings that allows a decisive run to score. You can blow up that play by describing it, by interviewing players on both teams and by explaining the play’s significance. Don’t be afraid to go big on consequential plays.

Regardless how you focus your stories, though, one thing you do not want to do — and that’s starting at the beginning.

• an analysis of the crazy riots in Lexington, Ky., where fans started fires, fired guns at one another, set off fireworks and surfed atop cars.
• a compelling, thorough and sometimes humorous series on umpires by Erik Malinowski that also serves as a terrific model for multimedia reporting, entitled “Better Know an Umpire.”

Deadspin’s editor Timothy Burke chronicled the foolishness in Lexington by reviewing, analyzing and citing what he heard on the city’s police scanners that night. Ultimately, Burke produced a sort of greatest hits from the scanner that he offers as a three-plus minute audio feed. Burke also lists the key moments in the audio, such as police saying homeowners can deal with a couch burning in their driveway, somebody yelling “Everybody said they’re gonna shoot everybody,” and UK fans assaulting police with rocks and bottles. Hearing these reports brings the story to life.

In addition, Deadspin relies on several terrific sources to offer insights into umpires Bob Davidson, Tim Tschida, Phil Cuzzi and Dale Scott as part of a series to educate fans “on the human elements who have ultimate decision-making power over some 2,500 Major League Baseball games a year.” In a sense, the series reads like a report card, offer basic physical details (height/weight), along with more fascinating info (career ejections/no-hitters called/cities where ump is hated). Best part: a sample PITCHf/x strike zone that reveals called pitches in a game where someone had been ejected for arguing balls and strikes.

You can also find a video of a strikeout call, along with scouting reports from both an experienced baseball writer and from Major League Umpires’ Performance 2007-10 by Andy Goldblatt. This is a solid, entertaining report – and all without the alleged trademark fart jokes or sexual innuendo. Dammit.

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TrueBlueLA has established itself as a credible site

Sports blogging has always received a bad rap, framed as though all bloggers live (and rarely leave) their parents’ basement. That is no longer the case.

The NHL was the first sports organization to see the value in bloggers, realizing these writers could reach more fans than local newspapers that offered scant coverage usually assigned to inside pages. In Washington, for example, the Post focused far more on the Redskins, Wizards and baseball than on the Capitals. As a result, the Caps credentialed several bloggers early on.

Bloggers are gaining credibility across the sports landscape. Last week, the Dodgers fully credentialed TrueBlueLA, allowing them access to the clubhouse for interviews after games. For the past few years, the site’s primary blogger had been limited to the dugout and field before games and to the press box during games. Charlie Steiner, the Dodgers’ radio play-by-play announcer, supported the blog’s new status last Friday when he spoke at the Summit on Communication and Sport in nearby Peoria, saying this blogger worked professionally, diligently, and ethically.

Most blogs, though, do not report as thoroughly and professionally as either TrueBlueLA, On Frozen Blog, or The PensBlog. Nor are most bloggers passionate enough to work a website full-time. That’s not to say, one should not attempt to create a blog. At college newspapers, for example, sports blogs are essential in providing timely news on campus sports teams. Plus, aspiring sportswriters can learn a great deal by blogging even on a part-time basis.

But, in order, to create a successful fan blog, one needs to spend far more time on the venture, posting frequently and – more than anything – establishing one’s self more as a true fan than as a credible journalist. Those were some of the findings made by Eastern Illinois assistant professor Matt Gill, who presented research on NFL bloggers at the international sports summit in Peoria, Ill., last weekend. More than anything, Gill says, a blogger’s legitimacy is enhanced by revealing passionate, biased posts.

Fan blogs are intended to be more like fan magazines than sports journalism. You can read some at SB Nation, which promotes itself as “unapologetically biased.” These blogs take the fan-interaction typically found at a game or a sports bar and re-create it online during games, where fans comment on numerous threads. By far, game coverage should dwarf other posts and discussions. After all, games are the reason fans follow their respective teams. So make sure you blog before, during and after games, if you want to be considered authentic.

Early on, bloggers for sports fan sites need to reveal a deep connection to their respective team by telling a sincere, convincing story of fanhood, says Gill. After that, fan bloggers need to display that they follow the team as passionately as the most hard-core fans by revealing that they live and die with each play, by fully analyzing match-ups for each game, and by referencing team history. For example, bloggers could cite best players by position, could communicate a team’s defining moments, could relive a team’s peaks and valleys, or could commemorate past heroes.

In addition, a sports fan blogger needs to see the sports world through the a fan’s lens. All life is viewed through the perspective of being that team’s fan – although I’m not sure an fan blog could justify how Kentucky fans reacted this past weekend after the Wildcats defeated Louisville in the NCAA semifinal game, burning couches and cars. Joey Frederick, who joined the revelry in Lexington, said Saturday’s win warranted a party on campus. “We are the best team in America,” he said. “I think houses should burn.”

Bloggers for fan sites also need to identify and communicate the depth of antagonist relationships with other teams, such as those between the Cubs-Cardinals, Yankees-Red Sox, Bears-Packers, Florida-Georgia, and Kentucky-Louisville.

Interestingly, bloggers target the national media, believing the national media hates their team, meaning, essentially, that it’s OK to be biased, so long as one is biased in the proper way.

Finally, Gill says, sports fan bloggers need to convey eccentricity. Did the blogger try to jump a fence to see a major sports event?  Or slog through the snow for several miles to watch a playoff football game? Real fans find a way to watch important games. Don’t forget to mention rituals, such as sitting on the right side of the couch when the New York Giants have the football and the left side when the G-men play defense. Readers of fan blogs will empathize.

Sports media constantly changes, expands and evolves faster than anyone can keep pace. Audiences are fragmenting as well, usually reading a variety of sources for sports information – mainstream media sites, fan sites, team sites, Twitter feeds, Facebook. Ultimately, the key is delivering news, offering interesting perspectives, and interacting with readers. But for fan sites, it appears one must also act more like a devoted fan.

Cliches are fun to say, but difficult to understand, especially to readers who have just started following a sport. We can’t write just to insiders, otherwise newer fans will get frustrated and confused. That’s why sports journalists need to be more precise. To assist in that quest, here are some tips to improve writing about baseball:

• Do not feel compelled to add ‘inning’ throughout a game story. Using it in first reference is sufficient. For example, you can write that “Eastern held a 4-2 lead in the eighth.”
• Home run is two words. (And it is not a ‘dinger nor ‘tater.’)
• Fielders do not ‘gun out’ runners on the bases, fortunately. Otherwise, that would be the story. Instead, you should write that someone made a strong throw from right field to third that beat the runner for the final out. In a one or two-run game, you could spend even more time describing this place, perhaps making the play the lead.
• Spell out numbers under 10.  A team collects eight hits, not 8. A player drives in four runs. A pitcher strikes out nine batters. A team scores two runs in the third inning. Unless the number is 10 or larger, do not use numerals.
• You can use numerals for numbers that would appear awkward or lengthy written out. For example, cite a player’s earned-run average as 2.86 and a player’s batting average as .385.
• Use fractions to address partial innings for pitchers. In a box score, you might see that C.C. Sabbathia pitched 6.2 innings. Do not use that shorthand in your game stories, because that really means that C.C. pitched two-tenths of an inning, which is impossible since there are three outs. Instead, write that Sabathia pitched 6 2/3 innings.
• Use words to convey when a pitcher completed less than one inning. For example, “Jamie Moyer lasted one-third of an inning” or “Mariano Rivera pitched two-thirds of an inning for the save.”
• Runs ≠’pushed across the plate’, nor ‘plated.’ Avoid these like a slider on the outside of the plate. Keep repeating: Cliches suck.
• By the way, home runs are not mammoth (or woolly). If you want to convey that a home run went far or high,  estimate how far it traveled. For example, “Rodriguez belted a two-run homer that carried well beyond the 420-foot wall in left-center field.”
• Introduce speakers after the first quoted sentence, otherwise readers will have to guess who’s talking. “The elbow is under stress every time a pitcher throws a pitch,” said Dr. John Deitch, who directs the sports medicine discipline for WellSpan Orthopedics in York. “Recent research suggests that the fastball is as stressful on that ligament as an off-speed pitch. Every time a pitcher cocks his arm back, every single pitch, the elbow is under stress. The way this ligament wears out is repetitive stress.”
• Tell the reader more than who won the game in the lead. Find a story angle that might revolve around a key play, trend or stat – or around a storyline off the field.
• Use active voice. Instead of stating that a player had four hits and two RBI, write that a player rapped four hits and drove in two runs.
• Team records are not that important in most baseball stories, so insert those beyond the opening paragraphs. And when you do, you can set them off with parentheses. For example, “Eastern Illinois (13-10) used four pitchers in the game.”
• Get comments from coaches and players from both teams.

For more help in learning how to use sports terms, you can check out the Field Guide To Covering Sports. The Associated Press stylebook also offers some examples in a back section.

Remember, precise language conveys information far better than vague cliches. Always.

Legendary sportswriter Furman Bisher, who regularly spoke with Ty Cobb, snared the only interview offered by Shoeless Joe Jackson, covered the first authentic NASCAR race, and offered illuminating insights on sports, died Sunday, prompting countless eulogies for a man who defined sports in the South for many years. Robert Bohler, longtime journalist and current adviser to Texas Christian University’s student-run newspaper, The Daily Skiff, reflects on this amazing career.

Furman Bisher, one of the greatest sportswriters of the 20th Century died on Sunday, and the wires (and the Web) are full today of coverage and tributes to the former sports editor of the Atlanta Journal and Constitution.

And even if you never read his stuff, it’s hard not to miss Bisher or the other major columnists of the day on ESPN Classic footage as they weigh in on the great sports figures and events of the last century.

And what a life he had.

He, like his counterparts at the other major newspapers, served as the eyes and ears for so many at the major sporting events when commentary was limited to the printed page. He scored exclusive interviews with Shoeless Joe Jackson and Ty Cobb, he covered the funeral of Joe Louis, and he covered more than 50 editions of the Masters golf tournament and the Kentucky Derby. He’s revered among Southern sports enthusiasts of the day that don’t include the most rabid of University of Alabama fans, for whom he’s the Antichrist to this day for his real or perceived roles in two separate Saturday Evening Post stories that targeted the practices of Crimson Tide football coach Paul “Bear” Bryant. One of those stories, in which Bisher played a minor role as a researcher, precipitated the landmark Curtis Publishing Co. v. Butts that’s a staple in press law for its role in defining public figures and standards of actual malice.

I only briefly met him when he was a guest speaker at a Boys Club dinner in my hometown while I was a college student, but over the years and at my initiative we had sporadic email conversations

He was always cordial except for the one time I suggested, when a ‘Bama reader savaged him before an upcoming Bulldogs-Crimson Tide game, that it might be a great opportunity for him to resurrect his version of events to set the record straight. I’m forever grateful to the Internet gods that his response came over the Ethernet instead of straight from the horse’s mouth. But he continued to answer – once again cordially–when I would drop him a note from time to time.

And from time to time, he probably would have benefitted from having an editor—if one were so brave—or at least a sounding board for his copy when he was particularly pointed in his viewpoints. He once called transsexual tennis player Renee Richards a “mixed doubles” player.” In later years he once offered a politically incorrect scenario about why “White Christmas” wasn’t played at malls anymore during the Christmas season, and he got caught up in controversy a couple of years ago when he recounted on his blog an allegation that Tiger Woods’ wife had struck him with a golf club.

Not his most shining moments. But, by far most of his career, he wrote with such grace and wit that it seemed as if sport was only coincidentally the beat for his commentary. Growing up, I could hardly wait each afternoon for the Atlanta Journal to arrive on my grandparents’ doorstep so I could read Bisher and the news columnist Paul Hemphill, whose collective influence planted in me the concept of what a great life newspapering could be.

Judging by readers’ comments over the years, he remained a revered presence in their lives. One of the traditions eagerly awaited his legion of admirers was his annual Thanksgiving column of more than 50 years about the many things for which he was grateful. When his didn’t appear this past year, his followers noted, and several columnists from the smaller papers paid tribute to that tradition with columns of their own.

The writer Dave Kindred once recounted what happened when he, as an already well-established columnist, had the temerity, against the sage advice of his peers at the Constitution, to inquire as to just what Bisher was writing, just to make sure he and the great one were not stepping on each others’ toes. “Judas Priest!” Bisher thundered. “General observations of the day.”

Whether his columns were always well-received or not, his opinions on “the observations of the day” were never ambiguous, and in an era when the Atlanta Journal covered Dixie like the dew and his reporting and opinion were nationally featured in the Post and The Sporting News, he never failed to deliver.

No quotes in a game story? Inconceivable.

As I judged two state collegiate journalism competitions the past week, noticed a few areas where students can improve their coverage.

Add insights from players and coaches. Many stories failed to include a single comment, which is almost inconceivable for today’s readers. Most others included brief comments from the local school team. Few offered comments from opposing coaches and players, people who can deliver a much wider perspective on key plays, significant stats and player performances. By speaking with these other sources, you’ll be notably more informed and your stories will be considerably better.

Focus first on key moments in the ‘final’ minutes or innings. Do not start by offering key runs in the first half or a key hit during the opening innings of a game, particularly if the game is close. Put that information toward the end of stories, unless these moments truly were the most significant.

Find a storyline. That means you’ll need to prepare a few potential angles before you head out to games by talking with coaches and reading both press guides and past stories on both teams. Don’t just offer play by play or a few key stats. Instead, learn more about players in order to weave this into game coverage.

Avoid cliches like the plague. Don’t write that teams are ‘on fire,’ that a team ‘flipped on a power switch,’ or that a team is ‘raining down 3s.’ Save those terms for post-game talk with friends or family.

Do not ‘play off’ team nicknames. The Dragons did not literally slay the Swedes and the Eagles are not really going to soar over anybody. Using these terms is sophomoric. More importantly, they detract from the games themselves. Instead, focus on how and why one team was able to defeat another by preparing, taking detailed notes during a game, and then speaking with as many players and coaches as time permits. That would be far more creative.

One final note – college journalists should focus on their own campuses and communities, not write stories about the local professional sports team (unless they actually covered these teams.) No need to regurgitate what you read elsewhere. Instead, offer original reporting on the school’s cross country, baseball or soccer teams. Our job is to deliver news, not merely summarize what others have reported.