Every school has its athletes; the runners, the football stars, the basketball players, the wrestlers, and everything in between. And pretty much every school publicizes the teams and players, from the day-to-day competitions to their biggest successes.
Just like all the others, Urbandale High School has its athletes and its social media but, unlike all the others, the publicity for their activities isn’t very equal. Out of 60 posts on the J-Hawk Activities Instagram page, only 3 of them pertain to the cross-country teams. While, 46 promote Friday night lights, volleyball, bowling, basketball, wrestling, and the softball and baseball teams. Though many of Urbandale’s student-athletes are involved in many different activities some students feel that the publicity for all of them should be equal.
Senior, Anna Thompson who has run 4 years of high school cross country says, “Well if we’re lucky we get a rotating picture on the TVs…” “I think football is a little excessive, they should probably make it a little more, even so, all activities get equal coverage…”
Ethan Guild, a sophomore who has been running for 6 years says, “I feel like no, and that’s just because football gets all the attention, I extend this to golf too. Unless we get to a higher level we don’t get any coverage whereas football gets coverage win or lose” Guild feels that not only the cross country teams but also some of the other fall sports are under-publicized compared to the football team. In the 2023 season the boy’s cross country team, and Senior Alex Mackie from the girl’s team, qualified for state. However, the only publicizing they got was two Instagram posts (which are two of the three posts they have), one from the state qualifying meet, displaying the times and places of all the varsity runners that competed. Which was also displayed on the TVs. The other was pictures from the day of the state meet.
Both Thompson and Guild say that the JV and 9/10 teams get nearly no coverage, especially compared to the Varsity teams. “JV teams don’t get any coverage most coverage comes when we make state,” Thompson says. “No, because it’s really only varsity that they document if anything happens,” Guild commented.
Guild also says that the sports coverage at the school overall is minimal, “I’d say its rather minimalist. If you’re not paying attention to anything you’re not gonna learn about it. The school doesn’t do much to advertise the sports.”
Maybe it’s because football is one of the most popular sports in the country, however, if the other sports were publicized more they could end up being just as popular.
