Looking for good news? Turn to the high school sports pages

Long before we covered the Cubs, the Sox, the Hawks, the Bulls and the Bears, we covered such teams as the Knights, the Mustangs, the Huskies and the Grens.

High school sports has been the bread and butter of the Daily Herald since long before the newspaper was even a daily publication.

If you've ever spent much time reading Daily Herald high school coverage, you probably know it's hard not to browse through those pages without a smile on your face. If you haven't figured out why, I'll tell you: This is not a place for bad news.

Sure, there are winners and losers in any game (there aren't even ties anymore in football), but you'll read precious little about how a team lost.

For more than half a century, we've referred to these as "Bob Rules." They're not written down. They're merely passed from generation to generation of sports editors and writers. They come from Bob Frisk, our high school sports editor who retired a few years ago after 50 years with the paper.

Bob's Rules held that we don't name the kid who fumbled the ball on the 2-yard line or the kid who dropped the pop-up or struck out to lose the game.

However, if a softball player drops the pop-up to let a run score and then takes the lead by swatting a homer with runners on, we will tell her story of redemption.

If high school kids are fortunate enough to play at the college level or the pros, where they'll rake in lots of money, they've entered a realm in which criticism is warranted. But in high school it's all about building confidence, focusing on teamwork, overcoming adversity and pure love of the game, rather than grumbling about who the goat was in today's contest.

And we're wholeheartedly complicit in that.