Every night, Maroon Sports lets out a collective groan when we find out that, yet again, we’ve run out of space. Though I feel that, since I took over four quarters ago, my staff has done an excellent job returning the section’s focus back to the Chicago Maroons, we have raised our coverage expectations so high that we have simply run out of print space.
We have constantly been rethinking the way we deliver our information to the University community, and now I’m happy to announce that we have also expanded outside the box into entirely new media.
Two of our staffers, graduate student Omar Al-Ubaydli and fourth-year Mark Liskyvich, have been tirelessly working to get Maroons soccer games broadcast online. After a couple (mostly) successful test runs Tuesday and Wednesday, we believe this program will allow students, parents, and alumni to conveniently follow our school’s programs. Our broadcast team is smooth, witty, and most of all provides great analysis that we can only give you a taste of in print. Most of all, though, our soccer teams are simply great to follow and are the main engine behind this programming.
We are also putting together the first-ever Maroon Sports podcast, a radio-show-on-the-go MP3 file that you will be able to listen to on your computer or portable player. Again, we hope we can give you more in-depth information than can normally make the newspaper, but we also hope it will allow people to actually hear fellow students describe their experiences instead of just watch from a distance. Each one, which will be available through maroon.uchicago.edu, will feature highlights (including game calls from Omar and Mark), interviews, analysis, and editorials for your downloading pleasure.
Our print efforts won’t go unimproved, either. Thanks to my new co-editor Joe Katz, we are hoping to provide better written, more thorough coverage of sporting events as well as a more regular features article schedule to dig one level deeper than box scores reveal. Joe is unquestionably our best writer and our most tireless researcher, and he will help push this section to entirely new levels. We already have a feature series, From Maroon to the Pros, which will chronicle those affiliated with the University who have worked in or with professional sports, and a set that will cover club sports. Primarily, of course, we will continue to do what we do best: Bring you all of the Chicago Maroons as they put together another fantastic year.
