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Help from someone with newspaper journalism experience?
I'm on my high school paper, and I'm writing my first sports article. It's a recap of the boys cross country season. I'm completely stuck thinking of leads and theres some things i wrote that i feel like they sound stupid:
There is much more to the team than just running at meets and practices. Sound stupid?
“My favorite part of being on the team would be the team dinners. It’s a good chance to talk to the guys outside of practice and meets,”
The team had high hopes for their season this year, but fell short of their goals because of injuries.
“I think as a team we really surprised ourselves,”
Do those sound awkward or are they okay?
3 Answers
- macLv 71 decade agoFavorite Answer
Every team has a best player, or runner, start off with the best on the team and then write about the team. For example, John Smith met his personally cross country goals this year, posting his best times in his high school career, nonetheless, he would have enjoyed more to be on a championship squad.
- Anonymous1 decade ago
I think you can do better. You need your lede to accomplish a couple of things: grab the reader's attention, and give the reader an overall idea as to what the story is about. And you need to do this in a relatively short sentence.
One of the problems with your above examples is that I have no idea what team you are talking about. Decide on the focus of the story, and that will help you write your lead. Is the story more about the a.) specifics of the season (either where did it place in the county/state, personal records, injuries, etc.) or b.) more of a feature about the camaraderie of the team (bonds between teammates, how this seemingly individual sport is actually a team sport in many senses, etc.). That doesn't mean to say that if you go with story a you won't have something to say about the team's camaraderie, or if you go with story b that you won't talk about the runners' injuries.
Remember the five W's and H (who, what, when, where, why, and how). Try to get some of those in your lede.
So here is a sample lede for story a:
The boys' cross country team crossed the final finish line of the season this year at the County Meet, but not with as many runners or personal best times times as they had hoped.
And a sample for story b:
The cross country boys have raced in their final meet, but the friendships formed during the season will last long after they turn in their uniforms.
Hope this helps! I'm sure you can Google "how to write a lede" and get more assistance.
- njyogibearLv 71 decade ago
I can see where you are going with this....Even though you are trying to take a broader view than just focusing on their win-lose record, you still need to include a statistic about their record in the 1st or 2nd sentence.
