Remember when you taught your intro-level students — all of your intro-level students — how to cover breaking news? Yeah, me, too. You know who might not remember it, though? The sports reporters who have been busy writing game stories, live Tweeting from events, putting together highlight packages … you get the idea.

With that in mind, let’s not miss the opportunity to get them to connect to their hard news reporter roots whenever some sports news breaks in your building.

Obviously, this one is difficult to plan for. Sure, we can try our best to predict which teams and athletes will do great things that season, but we also need to be on our toes and ready for when news breaks: a big upset win, someone qualifying for state, etc. A great way to identify topics for these types of stories is to start each class period with something we call “What’s Happening?” where staffers share potential story ideas from what they’re hearing in the hallways or seeing on their peers’ social media accounts.\

These are different from “gamers” because you probably didn’t have a reporter on the scene, so they will be piecing the news together by talking to sources after the fact. Be sure to ask a ton of questions so you can feel like you were there, however, and then also do your best to “featurize” the story with detail and emotion, making it a bit more timeless than a gamer.

Here is an example detailing a girls’ wrestler’s successful state run: 

https://prospectornow.com/30183/sports/winter-sports/wrestler-viola-pianetto-makes-history-at-state/

And here’s one telling the story of girls’ swimmers’ experience at state:

https://prospectornow.com/29371/sports/girls-swim-and-dive-quartet-grows-bond-at-state/

Note: This post was originally part of my MJE Project, “Beyond the Box Score: A Multimedia Approach to Comprehensive High School Sports Coverage,” which I completed in the Fall of 2025.