I am writing today to voice my frustration with all Athens newspapers and their coverage of local sports. Frequently, we are bombarded with uninteresting and unnecessary feature stories about football, baseball and basketball. These teams, who until recently have found little success, are glorified and put on a pedestal for the community to admire. They are recognized significantly among all news, even so much as to have feature stories running the days leading up to an event, during and immediately afterward. And when it is not the aforementioned three sports, only other varsity and NCAA sports are mentioned. We hear about swimming, golf, track and field and volleyball in the background, echoing Ohio University's main athletics.
But what I do not see in these newspapers are coverage of the lesser-known sports or their results ever posted in the papers, even minutely. Often times these unnoticed teams carry a higher GPA, are more academically involved, practice more often, fund the teams themselves and are especially more noticeable than much of OU athletics; they are more successful.
Take for instance the Ohio University Equestrian Team. They were covered not only locally but also nationally when, in 2001-2002, they won the national championship. Shortly after, their barn and practice area burned to the ground, killing one horse, injuring several others and destroying all the team's equipment. For weeks after, the team was covered by local and national news.
Since then, the team has been left unnoticed although earning a bevy of important titles, championships and national recognition. Recently, Ohio University sophomore Katie Martin was named Individual National Champion at Intercollegiate Horse Show Association Nationals. It becomes hard then, as a student, to understand how a team that is understood to be a national competitor throughout the rest of the country can be unnoticed by the school that they represent.
This team has athletes as much as the football team. This team is more successful than many of OU Athletics. And yet, more than half of students on campus don't even realize they have national competitors in class with them because of a lack of exposure by the local media.
So I urge newspapers in Athens, specifically The Post, to take the time to explore other athletic stories rather than reiterating the loss of the baseball team or the sixth place finish of the track team. What about the regional championship the equestrian team won for the ninth consecutive year? What about the start to the rugby season? Our school has more than 36 sports teams that are rarely, if ever, covered by local news sources. There is much more to Ohio University Athletics than just varsity sports.
Rebecca Milton is a junior studying organizational communication.
4 Opinion
Letter to the Editor
