An alternative way to tip off the high school basketball season

The tip off to high school basketball is right around the corner.

If your newspaper produces a special section previewing the season for teams in your area, you should consider taking a cue from the format that the Messenger Post Newspapers used for their preview section, which is featured below.

The newspaper group of weekly newspapers and one daily, covers a ton of high school basketball teams. Instead of writing feature stories on those teams in their preview section, they glanced down each team and used the space that they used to spend on long-form previews with features on athletes and key questions to answer for the upcoming season.

For each team the newspaper included:

• Coach
• Last year's record
• Returning starters
• Key players
• Key game
• Coach's quote
• League
• Class
• Team Colors

And each team has a specific sponsor, which is noted in the headline area next to the team name. This is a nice and simple way of connecting advertising to a local team. A traditional ad from that advertiser is featured on feature pages further back in the section.

For the reader on the run, this is a great format to use. Even if you don't have a preview section, consider how this kind of format might work as you tell readers about the upcoming season.