The Sports section covers a lot, just by following Columbia’s varsity programs from season to season. Each of the approximately 135 papers during the course of a year has a sports page that is filled with almost everything imaginable about varsity athletics at Columbia and even around the Ivy League.
However, we decided that was not enough. Varsity sports encompass only one part of Columbia’s athletic endeavors. This is where club sports come in. On March 5, we launched the first of a weekly series that is going to focus on individual club sports. This series will go until the end of the semester with the option of continuing in the fall if there is still interest from readers and from the clubs themselves.
Another area of Columbia athletics that does not usually get covered on the Sports page is the spirit groups that are involved with varsity sports teams. On March 4, we ran a story about cheerleading as the first of a four-part series that continued on March 6 with a story on the marching band. Stories about the dance team and Roar-ee will finish the series and run after spring break.
As earlier stated, there is more to Columbia athletics than the varsity programs themselves, which is why the Sports section decided to introduce these series. They also provide more diverse coverage, which we believe is relevant and interesting to our readers. These non-varsity student groups are accessible to students at-large and are either sports based or entrenched in the sporting world, thus we the editors decided that it was not only an opportunity for the section to try something new, but almost our duty to provide our readers with new and interesting coverage.