The 2016-17 school year has already brought an abundance of excitement in the sports world, capped off with a city championship from the Boys Varsity Soccer Team.

  It can be difficult for students to keep up with all these events, or attend every game — but now it might be a little easier, thanks to Lane’s new Sports Communication class.

  The course, taught by Varsity Basketball Coach and Lane alum Nick Logalbo, is made up of a team of students dedicated to reporting sports news through social media and other outlets.

  With the revolving door of principals Lane has had, Logalbo struggled to get the course approved.

  “I’ve been presenting this course for a while now to different principles, we’ve had four principles since I’ve been here, and last year we finally got it approved to run,” he said.

  The course is an honors English class where the students learn to cover and report sporting news.

  “The vision of the course is to train our students to equitably cover the athletic department,” Logalbo said. “I feel like our students are so talented and at the same time our athletic department is so special, and I think we really need to make sure that the community,  prospective student athletes, and our school body itself know all the great things that’s happening within the athletic department.”

  Although Logalbo has found it challenging tying common core standards to a journalistic class, he’s found confidence in the class through his students and their internal motivation. The course offers students an insight on journalism as a potential career path or college major and allows students to cover the sports they love and voice their opinion.

  “I chose Sports Communication as class because I wanted to try and find something that I was really passionate about that could possibly be a future major or career path,” said Girls Varsity Basketball player Maya Lilly, Div. 763. “One of the goals of the sports communication class is to give all sports equal publicity to our students, staff, prospective students, and alumni.”

  Lilly said she sees a gap in coverage between male and female sports.

  “Personally I think that females are very under represented in athletics,” Lilly said. “As a female I [joined] mostly to give female athletics more spotlight.”

  It hasn’t just been the athletes who noticed a divide in male and female sports coverage, students have spoken out on the topic as well.

  “I think the boy sports, maybe not on purpose, but in the end get more attention,” said senior and Girls Basketball Manager, Delyna Hadgu, Div. 751. “Being in [Sports Communications] we have the power to give full coverage to all sports equally, and that is a way for us to make sure that not only boys sports are getting covered, but female sports are getting an equal amount of coverage.”

  The course uses a multitude of platforms to cover the athletic department including social media.

  “The truth is social media isn’t going away, as we all know, so it’s important that the students are informed,” Logalbo said.

  Students are responsible for running team Twitter and Facebook pages, which are, used for press releases and score updates. There’s also many other future collaborations in store for sports communications within the world of Lane Tech media according to Logalbo.

  “We’re talking about working with The Warrior on some things,” Logalbo said. “I’ve already talked to Mr. Yadao about doing some collaborations. We’re already collaborating with Ms. Diamond and the media crew class — their students are taking photos and videos for the content and videos we produce, and we’ve already actually talked to Mr. Hayes and the web design course and trying to revamp the Lane athletics website.”

  Although the course seems to be moving at a rapid pace and accomplishing a lot in a short period of time, Logalbo understands that this is the inaugural year for the course and that patience is going to essential for him and his students to achieve success.

  “No other high schools are doing anything like this, so everything we’re doing we’re doing from scratch, and we wanna make sure it’s done right,” said Logalbo. “It’s having patience with each other and understanding that this isn’t gonna happen overnight, it’s a process.”