The most important thing to understand is that coaches should not expect the media to cover all sports on their own.

Coaches and booster clubs must work to get their local media interested in the sport. It must be both easy and fun for journalists to cover your sport or they just won't bother.

The first rule is that coaches should not try to "do it all." It is the coach's job to train the athletes and supervise the program. A different person with an interest in the media should be specifically assigned to promoting the team.

This kind of person can be found for almost any program. For a college program, it might be a student sports informant ion assistant, a volunteer journalism student, or an active alumnus. For high school or club program, it could include a journalism student, an interested parent, even a member of the team. The key is to find somebody who is willing to put in the time and effort to make it work.

Your team promoter only needs a few basic tools to get the job done. A telephone is a must, along with a typewriter or word processing unit. Each team can design its own letterhead, for press releases and invitations. Access to a fax machine is also very helpful.

It should be the goal of your promotions volunteers to develop a regular following for your athletic program in the local media. They should also try to excite other media to cover your sport on special occasions.

Create a Mailing List

Find the addresses for the journalists who cover wrestling now, and those who might cover you sports now, and those who might cover it in your community. Place the addresses on a label form or in a computer database. This should include newspapers, radio and TV stations. Make sure to get the name of the person in charge. A letter addressed to "editor" may never reach the right person.

Other information to collect includes phone numbers and fax numbers. This list should be constantly updated, as media members change jobs or get new assignments.

Work the Mailing / Target List

Create pre-event press releases, results press releases and feature story press releases. Make sure that you sports team is a part of the journalists regular mail.

Call selected journalists with story ideas and invitations to attend events. Ask them how you can better help them cover the team. Be positive, no matter how badly you are treated.

Create Story Ideas

Ask yourself: "Why should this be covered? What is interesting, new or exciting about this?" Don't expect journalists to fully research your story. Do as much of the work for them in advance. Make it easy to cover.

The best personal human interest stories are often locked in a coach's head. Tell your publicity volunteer about your athletes, team and the competition.

Some journalists don't care about who beat who. They want feature material, interesting personal tidbits. Get to know your athletes as people and share that with the press. Wild hobbies, out-standing academics, big families, obstacles and handicaps overcome...the list goes on forever if you are creative.

Create "The Big Event"

No matter how good or bad a team or schedule may be, there will always be at least one event which has special importance. It may be a meeting with an arch-rival, a competition for the championship, a record setting event, regional or post-season qualifier, something that makes it bigger than others.

It could also be an individual match up, the two best in the league or region going head to head. Identify those and blow them up LARGE.

The final thing to remember is to treat the journalist well when they decide to cover your team. You must provide them a professional work situation, so journalists will be encouraged to come again. Remember - EASY and FUN.

Journalists need a few basics to do their job correctly. A place to sit, a place to work, a place to shoot pictures and video tape and access for interviews.

When the event is over, the coaches and athletes must be available for interviews, regardless of whether or not the team wins. If a journalist can not get quotes after the event, which is part of their job, they may never cover your sport again. The journalist may also need access to a telephone to file the story. Help them do their job.

After the event, the publicity volunteer should report the story and results to those not there. You might type up a small press release with the results to fax or mail to local media. At the very least, it includes calling in the final results and highlights of the event.

There is no guarantee that doing this work will always result in receiving media coverage. However, if these basics are not covered, it is a good bet that there will be no more coverage at all.

Most of this is not the job of the coach. Someone else should do the work. However, a coach must help make it easy for his promotions people to do their job. The coach should also follow up to make sure it is getting done.