Hello readers, my name is Jay Acker and I’m a member of The Sun sports department.

Don’t recognize the name huh? You’re probably thinking I’m the new sports reporter who just got off the bus from some other far flung other corner of this country. If you don’t recognize me I don’t blame you, but if you read the sports section you’ve read a lot of my work. Most of it is published under the ambiguous Staff Reports.

But don’t worry, I’ve lived in Yuma for almost four years. I went to school at Arizona Western College and for the last 21 months have been sitting at a desk in The Sun’s sports department six nights a week - save for one vacation a year to go camping in Flagstaff. That means I now know the difference between a Raider and a King, I know what town Antelope Union High School is in (Antelope drink out of wells is my mnemonic for that one), I remember when AWC football was really good. I can even harken back to the days that Z93 had local DJ’s, know how Yuma High got its mascot and have spent plenty of time scrutinizing the old timey photos of Yuma in restaraunts such as Mr. Gs and The Landing looking for where my house would be.

And since I started as the sports clerk nearly two years ago the biggest part of my job always was to sit here and answer the phone while the prep, and JUCO coaches called in the score of the latest away game and any others that we couldn’t have a reporter personally go to. In the summer, I listen to Scorpions away games on the radio.

I’ve talked to pretty much all of the local coaches several times, often in the same week, and don’t know what all of them look like. I get out and cover more events than I used to, but there are still many coaches that I haven’t met in person. And when I do have a chance I get pretty excited about it.

And now that I know a little bit about local sports, or at least think I do, this blog is going to be an extension of my constant efforts to expand coverage of what the local high school athletes are doing. The physical paper gives you the particulars of yesterday’s game, the web site is a searchable archive of past games that were in the paper, and this blog is going to be where I go back through the constant coverage and flesh out and catch the interesting trends and tidbits that the reader may not catch.

I plan to use this spring to provide my opinions on local teams, spotlight an upcoming or inspirational athlete, provide off season coverage and remind readers of important upcoming events or camps.

Blog topics I have planned in the very near future include a digest of the 5A Gila Valley boys tennis teams, and provide more information on a fledgling club basketball program. I might even deign to give my opinion on how Knicks new president Donnie Walsh should turn the team around, but for the most part this blog will focus on covering all the sports in the Yuma area.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 3rd, 2008 at 11:30 pm and is filed under Sports Under the Sun. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.