Trending
Although summer is officially underway, David Price doesn't start his new job at the West Virginia Secondary School Activities Commission until the first of next month.
With current executive director Bernie Dolan heading into retirement for some well deserved rest and relaxation, it will be interesting to see how the transition goes.
Perhaps some folks are unaware, but the number of sports writers in the Mountain State continues to dwindle by the day it seems.
Suffice it to say, getting new blood into the business is anything but easy.
One thing which always seems to be easy, though, is dealing with Heather Enoch, who is our usual contact person for getting credentials to all the various postseason events, out at the WVSSAC office.
She 100% deserves some props.
However, there are many other areas where things need to change.
I suppose change isn't necessarily the correct word, but rather enforced when it comes to the website of the WVSSAC.
For anyone who doesn't know, every single school in the state is supposed to put their athletic schedules on the WVSSAC website.
Along with the tasking job of putting the schedules on the website, every school is also supposed to update their results on the website in a timely manner.
I was going through the Mid-Ohio Valley schedules earlier this week to see if anyone had put up any for the fall sports season other than football.
Even though a vast majority of schools didn't have any schedules up whatsoever, others did.
The crux of the matter at hand is there are set deadlines issued by the WVSSAC and any school which either doesn't put up their schedules or report the results are supposed to be fined.
Well, on paper I suppose that's a pretty good thing to have but there sure isn't much of any enforcement on the matter as far as I can tell.
In fact, and I will not name the school here, but one Mid-Ohio Valley program still has a cross country schedule up on the WVSSAC website from 2019.
I realize we have 55 counties inside our borders, but I'm not sure how the governing body of athletics in the Mountain State ever has this arise as an issue.
There are procedures in place, which are not being followed, to make sure simple things like updating your schedules and results on the WVSSAC website are done.
If various boards of education learned the school was being fined because someone wasn't doing their job, I'd wager to guess said person would do their duties or shortly be relieved of them.
Anyway, onto more pressing subjects.
There are several sports writers across the state who have some amazing stories about their parking experience, or lack thereof, at the recent state track and field championships in Charleston.
One person was told when they tried to enter the main parking area they weren't allowed in.
The reason? Well, their vehicle didn't have any identifying marks -- like a television station would have -- and thus, go park on a street somewhere a dozen or so blocks away.
I brought up the issue to Mr. Dolan at the time, but he noted "we had a parking lot for workers and officials. We have allowed others to park in that lot if there was room.
"It fills up well before the start of the meet because the workers have to be at the meet early. We had a lot for the handicap near the gate also."
When I pointed out the television people were allowed in I was told "because they usually had more equipment."
Despite all of that, the thing which irked me the most was being told the "lot was full" after arriving on Saturday.
I won't go into detail about the two spots I saw in the adjacent lot in the far back end after circling around twice and being told by two other different people myself and sports editor Jordan Holland weren't allowed in the main parking lot because it was full.
It most assuredly was not, but I digress and now back to where the media generally parks at.
After finally finding a place to park several streets over and walking all the way around and back to the stadium, we headed in to get our credentials from the office.
Mind you, we had just been told there was no room for parking anywhere. As I strolled toward the office and neared the track, what do I see to my right? You guessed it, an empty parking space.
Now, if that wasn't bad enough the kicker is the person literally opened the gate moments later and allowed another vehicle to drive on in. The person driving actually looked a little confused and I thought to myself they are wondering where am I supposed to park at. Needless to say, I happily waved them down and directed them into the empty spot which evidently wasn't there earlier.
To make matters even worse, when one enters the parking lot closest to the stadium the train tracks are to the left.
I don't know how many years I've seen cars parked parallel to the tracks, inside the fence at the stadium.
They easily could've parked close to a half dozen other vehicles right where you come in at, but that didn't happen.
My point is simple.
It's not like the WVSSAC is unaware of what media is going to show up for the event.
As long as it's known ahead of time who is coming, how complicated would it be to mark a space for them to quell an issue which shouldn't be one to begin with.
Of course, I'm probably asking too much since the WVSSAC can't seem to enforce getting schedules and results put up on their website from member schools.
Contact Jay Bennett at jbennett@newsandsentinel.com