Rhino's Ramblings - The Bouncing Ball

For those of you who follow MJ Independent you may noticed over the last little while we have made a switch to covering a little bit more in the way of sports than we usually do.

Let me assure you that is not accidental but rather very much intentional.

It is something that when the people who started MJ Independent - and no believe it or not I am not one of the founders - saw as a community role for this publication.

Sports was suppose to be given a better weighted presence than its had over the last couple of years in this publication.

The COVID - 19 pandemic and the associated restrictions which limited and even eliminated minor sports set off our original game plan off kilter.

During the trying times of the pandemic we, like all other media, scrambled to whatever sporting events there was available.

But each fall we seemed to end up with our tried and true formula of trying to shed some light on a seemingly forgotten segment of our national game through our female minor hockey beat.

This year it’s not going to be happening it’s a bittersweet decision as to the why we likely won’t be there to the extent we have been.

Things change and deep down I hope for the better.

It’s like one of those calls I received from a parent asking if I would be covering female - Mavericks - hockey the short answer is other than special announcements I would have to say - no I’m sorry I am not.

In order to cover female hockey properly in my mind is a lot of work.

You need to go with the team on a lot of trips and you need to stay abreast of the comings and goings of the team.

With that said the trips to Milestone, White City, Gull Lake and Leroy last year really got me seeing a lot of new scenery. And we for the most part enjoyable other than the longer drives where every hour and a bit I stopped for a nap.

Covering the Bantam A Mavericks took me six hours north up the road to see Moose Jaw take on Turtleford in the provincial finals.

That small story saw over 3,000 people read about the game. The all time highlight when it came to our coverage of female hockey.

Not bad from where we started and only 35 readers read our first Maverick game reports.

I hope our being there helped growing female minor hockey.

But on the other hand I have also been told our coverage of the Moose Jaw Mavericks is something some of the parents do not want.

Too much coverage is causing too much stress for some and that is not what we have set out to do.

We set out to cover the Mavericks to hopefully create interest in female hockey.

And if what we do through our intensive coverage causes stress and takes away from the game it is time to hang up the skates so to speak and cut back or even discontinue coverage.

It’s as simple as that.

So to add something to local minor sports this year we are moving to more high school sports.

It’s not going to be what I would say the most in-depth coverage but more a brief overview of a couple of games a week that may or may not be usually covered by the other local media.

We are listening to our readers and moving more towards a more picture and yes video style of coverage than the other local media offer.

This year I had someone offer to cover the Moose Jaw Warriors using the box scores and taking in the occasional game.

I told that individual sure have at it.

That is most likely the extent of our hockey coverage this season.

If someone offers and wants to write up some short stories with the standings and the stats who am I to stop you?

Besides we are ways looking for good quality submitted stories - club notes and the like.

The things that people do or are interested in in Moose Jaw.

But when it comes to sports so far we have over the last couple of months covered everything from lawn bowling to tennis, soccer and high school football.

Oh yeah of course we still do our horse events.

This coming week we're hoping to get back to a couple of places we have been at in the past to updates as well as get back into the vibe of what they are up to.

That should hopefully help keep you more up to date in the wonderful world of Moose Jaw sports.

We don’t have the resources to cover it all but we will do what we can to fill in some of the gaps out there locally.

With that said if you want to submit game writeups, stats or even a story about your sports club or event our email address is: moosejawnews@gmail.com