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Monday, November 18, 2013

Not at the game? Then don't complain

During Friday night football games, in addition to keeping stats and sometimes shooting photographs, our reporters have now been asked to tweet live scoring updates. Usually the person on the desk, i.e., the one who remains in the office, coordinates these tweets, along with ones from other sources, and posts them to The Wilson Times Twitter and Facebook accounts.

I noticed that several people following the Hunt-Fayetteville Terry Sanford game last Friday night complained the score wasn't being posted quickly enough. Certainly, we will try to do a better job in getting these scoring updates to our audience, whom we hope will then read the entire game story in the Times or on wilsontimes.com the following day.

But here's a piece of advice for the fans who were a little impatient: Go to the game. There were less than 800 people at Hunt's home playoff game Friday and Beddingfield had less than 300 there. Did I miss something or did Wilson suddenly start having a lot of things to do on Friday night? You know, if you care enough to want constant scoring updates, then why don't you care enough to go to the game? I think it's a sad state affairs when Wilson has two home football playoff games and only a thousand people show up.

Most of the folks at the Beddingfield game where I was seemed to be parents. If the students aren't interested in watching their team play, then folks from the community probably aren't going to be either.

I hear over and over and over that there's nothing to do in Wilson. That was even more true when I was in high school some 30 years ago but the football stadium were regularly packed Friday nights, especially for playoff games. Maybe it's because today the playoffs have become so bloated in this everyone-gets-a-trophy era that they don't mean as much.

I understand if people have other plans but it seems a lot of people made other plans Friday night. The Warriors are back home this Friday against West Brunswick in the second round and, win or lose, it could be Hunt's final home game of the year. We'll be doing our best to provide scoring updates on that game, as well as Fike-Fayetteville Byrd, Beddingfield-Northeastern and Southern Nash-Eastern Wayne, but if you really want to know what's happening when it happens, here's my advice.  Buy a ticket, support the team with your presence and your financial contribution and enjoy one of the best forms of entertainment Wilson has to offer by watching a high school football game.