Journalist Carter Huff Asks: Are We Using Social Media to its Potential?

It has been a busy start to the season for Urbana Fall Athletics. Almost every sport had either a tournament or a game scheduled for the weekends in September. With the completion of such athletic events, comes the sharing of results.

Urbana High School has multiple twitter accounts dedicated to sharing information about the school to the public including a personal account to the name of Gregory Hall, the Urbana High School Athletic Director, also dedicated to publicizing athletic results and other school related news. The high school has a specific Twitter account along with USD116. The Echo also seeks to publicize results as they come in.

The problem is many athletic programs whose events do not take place on school grounds and not necessarily spectator sports are often not publicized with results and standout performances like other Urbana sports teams are such as Football, Soccer, and Volleyball.

This in many athletes minds, raises question to whether Urbana Students and Administrators truly care about the performance of the athletes on the lesser known sports.

Greg Hall says, “The only time I will refrain from tweeting a result is in a situation where our team does not perform well, and I know the coaches and student-athletes are particularly upset about the outcome.”

The problem is that many Urbana sports teams are very successful and get no publicity. What about standout individual performances? Many times individual sports like golf, swimming, track, and cross country get no publicity at all even when individuals on the team do extremely well.

This month, the UHS Golf team participated in a golf tournament at the Turtle Run Golf Club in Danville. There were standout performances by Eli Evans who finished the day with a stroke count of 81, and also a strong performance by Evan Lovell who ended with a stroke count of 85.

When asked what he thought about the lack of results coming from the administrative twitter accounts, Lovell said, “I think it’s extremely unfair to post only about the major sports when other sports are also successful.”

When asked about what could be worked on when it comes to social media, Greg Hall said, “We can always improve the way we use social media. When I use social media, my goal is to get important information to all Urbana supporters in a short amount of time.”

Along with Golf, the UHS Cross Country team also had a competition taking place in Charleston on Eastern Illinois’s athletic fields. On the girls side Fiona Monroe, junior, placed 22nd, and Libby Cultra, a freshman, ran an impressive 20:03 and finished 9th overall in her debut. On the boys side, Garrett Williams also a freshman ran an impressive first time of 17:45, and Carter Huff a junior finished 24th with a time of 16:54.

Are the team results of golf and cross country not worth letting Urbana supporters know about? Because none of the stated results appeared on a UHS related social media account. Greg Hall stated that his goal is to get important information out to Urbana supporters.

The question remains as to how administrators and coaches expect athletes to step up to the plate and give their hardest for themselves and Urbana when they are not rewarded with the sharing of their results to the fellow students at UHS?