Dear Reader, It probably won’t surprise you to learn that the passions around high school football can run hot enough to end in someone’s house getting toilet-papered. But it’s a measure of how deeply MLive is connected to our local communities that the victim in one instance was Hugh Bernreuter, our longtime high school sportswriter for The Saginaw News. His crime? Choosing one local team over another in his weekly predictions column. “I’ve been in pregame speeches where they say, ‘This guy picked against you!’” Bernreuter said with a laugh. “When you show up at a game, you can tell how many people want to know what you said,” agreed Lee Thompson, high school sportswriter for MLive up the road, at The Bay City Times. High school fall sports resumed Aug. 18 in Michigan, but football starts this week. And MLive’s nine high school sportswriters will be back out under the lights. Bernreuter’s been in the business for 40 years, and Thompson 25 years, so there is a great deal of familiarity for them in the preparations leading to the season. Summer weightlifting sessions. Seven-on-seven drills. Writing season previews for the teams in your communities. And MLive’s Media Days, when we have players and coaches come in for interviews and photo sessions as training camps open. But of course, all that felt normal was given new perspective by the havoc caused by COVID, beginning in March 2020. “Talking to the players and coaches at Media Days, they were a combination of relieved and excited,” Bernreuter said. “(Football) is almost as much a social exercise as a physical exercise. They notice how much they missed it last year.” At this time last year, there was football – but no vaccine. Masks and distancing and uncertainties were everywhere, and many games were canceled as the virus hit school programs around the state. The precautions and work-arounds didn’t just affect the players. “Communication was the big one; I had to come up with new ways to connect with people,” Thompson said. “I went all of last year without going in a locker room. Sometimes you had to cover the game from the sidelines, sometimes from the bleachers. “You interview these kids after the game, and you always want to shake their hand. I had to fight that urge – it was so taboo last year to do those things.” Bernreuter and Thompson were guests on this week’s MLive podcast “Behind the Headlines.” They talked about the disruption and disappointments during the 2020-21 sports season caused by COVID, and the guarded optimism for 2021-22, even as the Delta variant of the virus gains steam. “There was plenty of heartbreak to go around,” Thompson said. “It was felt by just about every athlete out there. I hope that’s something we can avoid going forward.” But they also talked about life lessons that were imparted through the sadness, and how it’s being manifested as players take the fields this fall. “I think that’s something that hovers over everybody, the kids and the coaches: ‘Enjoy this, because it could be gone tomorrow,’” Bernreuter said.
###
This high school football season, you’ll see all the great MLive content you’re accustomed to – game coverage, photo galleries, video highlights and interviews, Player of the Week polls, a Player of the Year watchlist, and of course, the sometimes-contentious game prediction columns. And now we’re offering a new, easier way for you to find this coverage – newsletters delivered direct to your email inbox, Tuesday through Saturday, with the latest and best coverage from your region. We kicked those off this week in Ann Arbor, Grand Rapids, Muskegon, and the Saginaw/Bay City region. To sign up, visit mlive.com/newsletters.
Editor's note: I value your feedback to my columns, story tips and your suggestions on how to improve our coverage. Let me know how MLive helps you, and how we can do better. Please feel free to reach out by emailing me at editor@mlive.com.
John Hiner Executive Editor Vice President of Content Mlive Media Group
Having trouble viewing this email? View in your browser.
To ensure receipt of our emails, please add newsletters@update.mlive.com to your address book or safe sender list. You received this email because you are a subscriber to MLive.com newsletters. |