Senior Year Box Set

Chapter 4 – Orange/Blue Game

Chapter 5 – We Can Overlook It

Chapter 6 – Something That Won’t Get Me Fired

Chapter 7 – Fulfilling Wishes

Chapter 8 – Hotness

Chapter 9 – Form vs. Substance

Chapter 10 – Seeing Red

Chapter 11 – Dancing With The Devil

Chapter 12 – Screw Everything Else

Chapter 13 – Game of Phones

Chapter 14 – Dessert First

Chapter 15 – Reckless Abandon

Chapter 16 – What Happens on the Recruiting Trip

Chapter 17 – … Stays on the Recruiting Trip

Chapter 18 – I Would Have Wanted to Go Home, Too

Chapter 19 – Another Box Checked

Chapter 20 – It’s Been Three Years …

Chapter 21 – I Thought the Worst

Chapter 22 – Seize the Day

Chapter 23 – They’re All Sick!

Chapter 24 – Does That Include Sex?

Chapter 25 – Homecoming

Chapter 26 – If Dogs Ruled the World

Chapter 27 – Set a Better Example

Chapter 28 – I Think They Are

Chapter 29 – You’re Both 100% Sure?

Chapter 30 – Can I Come Home with You?

Chapter 31 – He Doesn’t Exist

Chapter 32 – Tell Me a Secret

Chapter 33 – Babygate

Chapter 34 – Nagging About Grandkids

Chapter 35 – Vitamin T

Chapter 36 – Date with Destiny

Chapter 37 – Phil’s Safe Today

Chapter 38 – Halloween Kittens

Chapter 39 – Mr. In Charge

Chapter 40 – I Agree to be Videoed

Chapter 41 – Away Game

Chapter 42 – Most Likely To

Chapter 43 – Flying High

Chapter 44 – Panic! At the Flight School

Chapter 45 – Score!

Chapter 46 – Your Dad Runs a Golf Course

Chapter 47 – Stroke

Chapter 48 – What Would You Even Do with Three?

Chapter 49 – Season Ends

Interlude Jeff Delahey

I’ve been covering area high school sports for the local paper for the past twenty-six years. But at this point, I seriously considered retiring. The way that sports is reported has changed drastically in the last ten to twenty years. Newspapers were quickly becoming obsolete. The Internet and video were what people wanted.

I personally believed that the Internet will someday be the death of real journalism. It used to be that there was a news cycle. TV reporters would work to have the story by their evening broadcast while the print media had until they went to press. The nightly TV news gave us images and the broad strokes while we would wake up in the morning to find our newspaper with the details.

Today, it was a race to get it on the Internet first. I bet that if you ask anyone under the age of thirty, they’ll tell you that they get their news on their phone or tablet. I know because I have grandkids, and they are glued to their phones.

Someone once said that if you want to find the real story, follow the money. If you use that strategy, all the newspapers going out of business should be your first clue. I’d read that even the major networks are considering ending their nightly news coverage because the news shows are no longer profitable. At our paper, we’ve made cuts, and I fear more are coming.

The budget cuts and the push to report the story first have combined to drive the quality of reporting to what I feel is an all-time low. Someone coined the phrase ‘fake news’ for a reason. In the rush to be first, getting your facts straight seems to be a thing of the past. You don’t have time to verify your sources or confirm anything. The goal is to get a dramatic picture or video clip with a flashy headline and a hundred words. God forbid it should be longer because people don’t have time to read more. I had become more than a little bitter at seeing my profession losing the trust of its readers.