Publisher’s message: a sports challenge for the non-sports minded

Some of you may know that I became a journalist because I wanted to be a sports writer.

Other people think it was because I was in college at U-M during the Watergate era and wanted to be an investigative reporter.

Uh, no.

I was drawn to journalism by reading compelling stories about athletes and coaches. And I wanted to emulate them.

So, you’d think I’d have been all over getting back to my first love during the last 5.5 years of publishing Chelsea Update.

After all, I make all the decisions about Chelsea coverage.

I planned to.

I threatened to.

Multiple times, in fact.

But as a new business owner, I kept being tripped up by the multifaceted tasks involved in running a small business.

I discovered that there’s a lot more to publishing a news site than writing and editing the many stories you read on Chelsea Update every day.

Only now do I feel like I have a pretty good handle on all those necessary facets to stay in business.

So, here I am, ready to return to my roots, but I plan to do so a little differently.

I can’t possibly attend all the Chelsea School District sporting events and I don’t have staff to do that, either.

So, you will continue to find final scores on the scoreboard on Chelsea Update’s home page, which will be sponsored this spring by Rick Taylor Real Estate. (See, I told you there was more to this than the editorial side.)

Many of the coaches are great about sending me summaries, and I’ll continue to publish those, too.

But I plan to write stories that will hopefully appeal to both the sports fanatics and the non-sports minded readers alike. 

I grew up in a sports-loving family that scrambled for the sports sections of three newspapers at the breakfast table. But I realize that there are lots of parents, and by example, their kids, who could care less about sports.

I get that.

Yet, I’m hopeful that I can convince those of you in that camp to give sports a chance.

There are multiple possibilities in the next few months that include girls’ soccer, boys’ and girls’ track, girls’ tennis, boys’ golf, boys’ lacrosse, baseball and softball.

With the help of the coaches’ insights, you’ll learn about the game within the game.

These season preview stories will provide a start line for you should you take the challenge of picking a sporting event to go watch.

Maybe even more than one.

It’s a great way to get outside and enjoy the weather and support the many talented Chelsea High School and Beach Middle School student-athletes.

And perhaps watching from the stands (with backs, I’d told) in the baseball stadium, or from the hill outside the tennis courts, these multi-sensory experiences will spark an interest in you or your children.

Encouraging kids to get some exercise through sport is much more than winning and losing, learning the rules of a game or “The Team, The Team, The Team,” as legendary U-M football coach Bo Schembechler said.

It can lead to a business deal or a career – in journalism, teaching, coaching, physical therapy or sports medicine, just to name a few.  

Please take my challenge and attend one of the many sporting events this spring.

And when you do, please let me know your thoughts.

Go Bulldogs.