Rhodes Less Traveled

Surprisingly, I haven’t received any complaints yet about the disparity of coverage we’ve recently devoted in our sports section to the South Kitsap High School football and girls’ soccer teams — neither of which has lost a game this season, which is well into the playoffs at this point.

This week, for example, the football team’s victory on Saturday over Heritage, as well as a preview of tomorrow night’s game with Skyline, warranted two full pages, while the soccer team’s win over Kamiak was given less than one. And frankly, I was surprised no soccer moms have called to demand equal time.

Pre-emptively, let me point out that the soccer game was played on Tuesday night and the paper was built on Wednesday, which by definition gives our small staff a lot less time to write, analyze and design pages than we had for the football game, which took place on Saturday night.

Beyond that, as laudable as the soccer team’s accomplishments are, they simply don’t generate  as much interest as the football team. If you doubt that, try counting those in attendance at a soccer game compared to a football game.

You may argue it shouldn’t be that way — and you’ll have many passionate soccer fans who agree with you. But as a newspaper, our job is to reflect how things actually are, not someone’s idea of how they ought to be.

On an individual basis, we’ll be just as proud of the girls if they ultimately win a state title as we were when then boys’ soccer team did last spring. And if they do so while the football team is eliminated, we’ll probably give more ink to the soccer team. Everyone loves a winner, after all.

But everything else being equal — which is to say, with both teams winning — don’t be surprised if we continue to lean in the direction of what more of our readers seem to care about.