We initially scheduled the following message to go out online a few months back but there was an error on Facebook's scheduling posts function. We apologize for that technical issue and we want to rectify that now. 

Since the start of the fall semester, we made the tough decision to suspend our weekly high school sports coverage to focus on building our digital presence. Our sports editor, James Kay, has shifted his efforts to creating new websites for all of Growing Community Media's publications. 

We understand the frustration coaches, athletes and athletic departments have with this move but we felt it was necessary for a couple reasons. Since the start of the pandemic, we have lost a severe amount of our advertising revenue and with it our page count has dropped. We decided as a staff our print space should prioritize having news and Viewpoints as our main focus since the size of our print product has shrunk and people engage with those stories more than our sports content.

While we have received emails suggesting we made this move because football was moved to the spring, that is not the case. We will not be covering winter sports (including basketball--despite the IHSA's plans to disregard Gov. Pritzker's ruling on winter sports) and spring sports if the situation does not get better. We do plan on writing a general recap of what went on in each season (including fall sports) and updates on what is happening with the IHSA's plans around COVID-19.

We look forward to a time in the future where we can bring back our normal sports coverage and provide stories highlighting athletes' efforts and accolades. We are also excited to create a robust online experience for our readership and believe all of our coverage, including sports, will be enhanced with a new online look and feel. Thanks for hanging tight and supporting local journalism.