Sports coverage a team effort

When we sent staff writer Ryan Day and staff photographer Jennifer Meyers to Albany this week to cover the Auburn High School football team's trip to be honored at the state Capitol, it was essentially the final chapter in our full-scale coverage of this remarkable story.

The reader feedback for the way our staff, particularly the sports and photo departments, covered the team's state championship run has been overwhelmingly positive. Clearly, many of you loved reading about these young men and their coaches, and the way they brought this community together.

As a quick refresher, here's some of what went into the paper. For the last few weeks of the playoff run, we had daily sports section stories on the team - often profiles about different individuals. State playoff game stories featured expansive coverage, with stories on A1, the inside of the A-section and the sports section, not to mention a photo page. We produced an outstanding retrospective special section a few weeks after the season ended, too.