Track & Field

[nogriz wiseone]

I realize this is a football site, but I assume it gets the most traffic and provides the most views for this rant. I'll tie it into football at the end.

Today in the IR they had a front page article (not main, but front page). The headline: "Grizzlies take 7th in Big Sky Track & Field." Really? Six teams finished higher than them (or should I say two teams finished lower?), one being MSU at 4th and let's not forget the MSU women at 3rd.

However, I do find it a little disturbing that in a rural state with minimal population, this is the slant the IR takes. Granted, they are down a sports editor and likely just took this article off the AP, but it is poor journalism at a minimum.

On a positive note, the winning 100 time for the men was 10.83 or not anywhere near what Chris Wilson (Bobcat football recruit) ran.

[canyoncat]

The IR is owned by Lee Newspapers as is the Missoulian. The IR gets their Big Sky articles out of Missoula. Lee Newspapers does not own the Bozeman Chronicle (actually not sure who does) so you usually will not see an article put out by the Chronicle in the IR. Tom can explain it better than me, but when he was writing for the IR they had a good balance between the Cats and griz.

[msusportsinfo]

Just for the record, MSU sports information sends press releases to the IR at the same time as the Chronicle, Gazette and all the other state papers. Lee also owns the Billings Gazette and we get coverage there.

[canyoncat]

But, press releases are only used if there is "room", and yes I have seen the short one or two paragraph press releases. Actual articles written by a Lee reporter are about the only ones that get into the IR. The Gazette does a good job of keeping up with both schools as does the Tribune. In Helena, Carrol rules (as it probably should) then UM then once in a while a Cat article. We used to get some real good game day coverage of both the Cats and the Griz, but they stopped doing that some time ago. Still most of the Big Sky articles seem to come out of Missoula and it always has a very pro griz slant. If there is one about the Cats it usually come from Billings about a day or two later. That's okay though, I only subscribe to the IR for the local news and get my MSU info from the Tribune, Gazette, Chronicle and Bobcatnation.

[CapitalCityCat]

It's interesting that they claim that article was written "by the Independent Record". I doubt they did anything except take excerpts from an article in the Missoulian or a press release from UM. Had they said the story was from the Missoulian, I might've understood the slant towards UM. But because they claim they wrote it, I consider it biased.

http://helenair.com/articles/2009/05/19 ... nships.txt" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Grizzlies take 7th at Big Sky track championships
By Independent Record - 05/19/09The University of Montana men’s track and field team scored 44 points Saturday to finish the 2009 Big Sky Conference outdoor track and field championships at Dornblaser Field in Missoula with 58 points and in seventh place. Ten athletes scored points for the Grizzlies on the final day of the four-day championships.

As expected, Northern Arizona used a strong showing in Saturday’s running events to pull away from Weber State and take the team title with 169 points. It was the Lumberjacks’ third straight outdoor title and 16th overall.

Weber State held the lead late in the meet, but NAU’s 33-point performance in the 5,000 meters proved to be too much for the Wildcats to overcome. WSU finished second with 142 points.

Idaho State was third with 132 points, Montana State fourth with 105 points and Eastern Washington fifth with 82 points.

Sacramento State (sixth place, 65 points), Montana, Northern Colorado (eighth, 40) and Portland State (ninth, 24) rounded out the standings.

Weber State’s Brock Rose scored 25 points to earn Track Athlete of the Meet honors. The sprinter swept the 100 and 200 meters and ran a leg of WSU’s winning 4x100- and 4x400-meter relays.

Idaho State’s Nathan Capps was named Field Athlete of the Meet after winning the decathlon and scoring points in both the 110-meter and 400-meter hurdles.

Montana junior Chris Hicks, sophomore Richard Brumbaugh and senior Jesse Loether all had top-four finishes Saturday.

After dropping out of the decathlon Thursday afternoon following a no-height in the pole vault, Hicks came back for a third-place finish in the triple jump Saturday with a distance of 47-2.25. Hicks has scored points for the Grizzlies in the triple jump at all five Big Sky indoor and outdoor championships in which he’s competed, with three third-place finishes.

Brumbaugh, with a distance of 208-5, took third in the javelin, an event stacked with nine NCAA regional qualifiers. The Grizzlies scored 10 points in the event when sophomore Cole Beyer finished fifth with a mark of 207-9.

Both Brumbaugh and Beyer will compete in two weeks at the NCAA Midwest Regional in Norman, Okla.

Loether took fourth in the 800 meters in one of the most exciting races of the day. Loether set the pace for the opening 700 meters, then ran shoulder to shoulder with a handful of runners before coming in fourth in a time of 1:52.84. The top five finished within three-tenths of a second of one another.

Montana had five other point scorers in Saturday’s running events.

Senior Cody Henning was fifth in the 200 meters in 21.88, freshman Case Parker was fifth in the 400 meters in 48.57, senior James Brown was sixth in the 200 meters in 22.13, junior Mac Bloom was seventh in the 5,000 meters in 14:57.28 and senior Dan Bingham was eighth in the 1,500 meters in 3:55.59.

Bloom ran the 5,000 meters at 3 p.m. on a day that reached into the 70s, one of Missoula’s warmest days of the spring. He also faced Northern Arizona’s top distance runners who would take the top five spots.

“Everyone had to run in the heat in the 5,000 meters, but that’s a tough race for Mac,” Montana track and field coach Brian Schweyen said. “We just haven’t had this type of weather to train in with the spring we’ve had. For him to come out here and do that in that field of runners was awesome.”

The Grizzlies’ other point scorer Saturday was sophomore Bryan Slingsby, who took sixth in the shot put with a mark of 52-8.75.

[HelenaCat95]

It's my opinion (and that's all that it's worth) is that this article is worthy of a polite call from the SID to the IR asking how/why the headline read like it did.

just my two cents

edit:
I went to the IR site and pulled up the story. Here is a comment that I cut and pasted here.

"" I couldn't agree more with the other comment. The Bobcats finished 3rd in the women's competition and 4th in the men, yet not comment on their performance whatsoever. No disrepect intended to Grizzly fans, but be fair to the followers of both schools.

More importantly, the Bobcats had 2 local Helena athletes who placed in the conference championship. Nick Morrow placed 4th in the men's pole vault and Bob Biskupiak placed 6th in the pole vault. These are two outstanding Helena athletes who deserve some recognition for their accomplishments.

What a missed opportunity by the Helena Independent Record!!! "

[CapitalCityCat]

Somebody must've called because they've edited the story and have taken out any of the individual UM accomplishments.

EDIT: Ok, something must be up with the IR website.... I checked it once and they had revised the story and had removed all of the individual results, but now they're back. I swear I'm not going crazy

[msusportsinfo]

This is just a guess, as I haven't heard anything from the IR or Missoulian, but it would be a very normal practice for one person to cover the meet for both the MIssoulian and the IR. I think the Gazette looks more at what we send them and then what the AP sends out as they are more of a statewide paper than the IR--the article in the Missoulian on Sunday was a lot longer and had full meet results. My guess is the same person wrote both. It was a little discouraging that the local Helena kids didn't get any mention in the article, but I think that just shows that someone from Missoula was covering the meet for the IR.

[msusportsinfo]

I just wanted you all to know that I did get an email from Jeff Windmueller, sports editor at the IR, apologizing for the lack of MSU coverage in their Sunday paper. He said they are going to do a follow-up on the MSU side of the meet and he was very sorry for the mistake.

[HelenaCat95]

I just wanted you all to know that I did get an email from Jeff Windmueller, sports editor at the IR, apologizing for the lack of MSU coverage in their Sunday paper. He said they are going to do a follow-up on the MSU side of the meet and he was very sorry for the mistake.

Excellent....and thank you for following up.
One small note - the article in question is today's paper (Tue May 19), not Sunday's paper.

[TomCat88]

I just wanted you all to know that I did get an email from Jeff Windmueller, sports editor at the IR, apologizing for the lack of MSU coverage in their Sunday paper. He said they are going to do a follow-up on the MSU side of the meet and he was very sorry for the mistake.

Although I don't work at the IR anymore I do root for them to do a good job covering everything. Thanks to Jeff Windmueller for identifying this and following up with an email to MSU letting them know you are on it. Very professional way to address an oversight.

MSU does a great job of getting all of its information out to the media. Even if a media outlet isn't able to cover an event with its own staff MSU sends its report to them.

[mchammer]

From my perspective, the IR coverage of the meet is embarrasing to the IR. I'm glad to hear the IR is changing the story to include us. We had a great meet on both sides. Thanks for bringing this up.

Mike Carignan

[CapitalCityCat]

Here's a link to the online story with the local Helena athletes highlighted and some information about some of the other finishers/qualifiers. In the print version, they do list all of the regional qualifiers as well.

http://www.helenair.com/articles/2009/0 ... 20_msu.txt" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Thanks to the IR staff for acknowledging this and for the Sports Information office and anyone else for making this happen. Also, congrats to all of the track athletes who competed. I'll be watching for results of the regionals.

[HelenaCat95]

Great article. Thank you to the IR for writing it, especially with the local angle. And thank you to the MSU SID office for staying on this and getting some good publicity for MSU track and field.

[Old Skool Cat]

Behold, the Power of BobcatNation!

[HelenaCat95]

Behold, the Power of BobcatNation!

"And we would have gotten away with it, if it wasn't for Scooby Doo and those darn kids from Bobcat nation."

[Old Skool Cat]

Behold, the Power of BobcatNation!

"And we would have gotten away with it, if it wasn't for Scooby Doo and those darn kids from Bobcat nation."

[CapitalCityCat]

Behold, the Power of BobcatNation!

"And we would have gotten away with it, if it wasn't for Scooby Doo and those darn kids from Bobcat nation."

Just proves that "meddling" in other people's business does pay off