Offering Sports Journalism classes would engage students

Commentary by Michael Robinson

Top Pucture: Wikipedia

09-20-25

Why doesn’t Uvalde High School teach sports writing allowing its students an opportunity to cover Coyote Sports?

Mina Kimes is an accomplished ESPN female sports analyst and program host.
According to ChatGPT, her network is between one and $2 million.

Having worked with local sports writers at different newspapers, I can tell you sports journalism is a discipline all its own.

With many Uvalde CISD students participate in football, baseball, volleyball, wrestling, weightlifting softball, etc. There are many opportunities for other Uvalde CISD student to be included who are not student athletes. They could learn to write and produce news video reports and multimedia content around their own school sports about their peers.

Is Uvalde CISD teaching Digital journalism to it students or are the students told that the professionals do those types of jobs?

There is a real opportunity for students to write about something that is very interesting and requires specific expertise.

While not taking away from adult sports reporters, these students have the best access to games and players and could easily do interviews of the players post game.

Uvalde CISD and other high schools are doing a huge disservice by not teaching modern journalism practices, especially sports journalism by local students.

Perhaps students don’t read and write a lot because they’re not giving the opportunity to do tangible writing on subjects that interest them and could prepare them for careers that are more accessible than becoming pro athletes.