The Editor's Desk

Let me begin with a big "attaboy" and congrats to the Newton High School wrestling team.

The club won NHS' first league title in the sport since 1977, then capped that effort with an undefeated dual season with a win in Salina Friday night.

I grew up watching the Dan Gable-led Iowa Hawkeyes. They dominated everyone. I know good wrestling, and domination, as a result. NHS' undefeated record, strong finish at the TOC and league title is something to crow about.

But there is something else we need to address today. The upset fans and parents. They feel slighted by the newspaper. Instead of a big headline and photo from the Salina meet Saturday morning, they saw a headline and photo for Don Cameron who won his 500th career game as a hoops coach.

Ouch.

We were caught in the middle. Two big accomplishments — within hours of each other. That means difficult decisions for the Kansan.

With limited resources, we chose to keep our sports editor in Newton that night. Had yours truly had transportation to and from Salina, I would have been there. However, I did not have reliable transportation. We really only had one person who could cover sports that night.

However, I do wish to point out the Thursday edition of our newspaper included a front page story about the wrestling team winning the first title in 35 years, and the quest for a perfect dual season. The article previewed the Friday night dual meet. Let's be clear — the league title was already won.
The only question at that point was if it would be shared.

We rarely feature individual sports team on our front page, this was something I
believe warranted that treatment.

That does not change what we had Saturday. However, it did factor into our decision making process.

Friday we lacked the staff to be at both Newton and Salina. It really was that simple. This weekend we will be forced to make difficult decisions again — state swimming (Topeka) and regional wrestling (Salina) overlap.

These are decisions not taken lightly and contain a myriad of variables we must weigh. And these are decisions, no matter which way we go, that leads to someone not being happy.