It was 16 years ago this week when I moved to Myrtle Beach and began covering sports on the Grand Strand.
Talk about feeling old, it’s only a matter of games before I’m writing about the children of athletes I wrote about in 1995.
But time flies when you’re having fun and I’m still having a blast hanging around the sports courts and fields of the Carolina coast, not to mention the beaches. That’s the main reason I am involved in today’s launch of a new website, GrandStrandSportsReport.com, (bookmark it now), dedicated to covering the local sports scene.
After spending 13 years at The Sun News and the past three as a freelance writer, I have watched the media coverage of local high school sports gradually decrease over time. Much of it has to do with the declining economy and budgetary cuts at traditional media outlets, but the student-athletes who play the games should not be penalized. They deserve recognition for their efforts, and this format puts it out there for friends, family members, fans and potential recruiters to see.
The mission of GrandStrandSportsReport.com is to level the playing field of local sports coverage. Yes, we will feature football, baseball and basketball, but we will do the same with tennis, volleyball and all the other sports that often get lost in the mix.
The focus will be on six area high schools – Carolina Forest, Conway, Myrtle Beach, North Myrtle Beach, Socastee and St. James. We hate to leave anyone out, but manpower dictates that we start a managable number of schools and expand in the future. Better to cover six schools well than 12 poorly.
We also will feature Coastal Carolina, Clemson and South Carolina in our coverage, as well as the Myrtle Beach Pelicans, golf and club and recreational sports, but the focus will be on the local. What you want to see is what we want to cover so your feedback is important to us.
We also need your help in providing scores and results, as well as news tips and feature story suggestions. This is a community-minded project and we need your help to do provide the kind of coverage our local athletes deserve.
Finally, this also will be a fun place to read and chat about sports. There will be opportunities to comment about stories and forums for some good-natured smack talk. Send a link to your Facebook friends – the more the merrier.
I’ll see you at the games, and right here at GrandStrandSportsReport.com.
