Q&A: Holy Family alum Vic Lombardi talks high school sports media coverage
There aren’t many people in Colorado that know the media scene quite like Altitude’s Vic Lombardi. The former sports director at Channel 4 consumed Colorado media as a high school athlete at Holy Family before coming back to his hometown to become a part of it.
He is perhaps the best known member of Denver sports media.
But this is far from the media that Vic grew up with. That became apparent last week when the Denver Post wiped out its entire prep sports staff in a matter of 24 hours.
A longtime advocate of the kids, Vic took some time to address the status of high school sports coverage today and how it got to where it is.
Question: What do you remember from high school sports coverage when you were playing up at Holy Family?
Lombardi: I remember two things. I remember the local paper being where you go for box scores and write ups. And I remember Marcia Neville. At the time, Marcia Neville was the most important person in town.
If she came to your event, or to your school or covered your game, you had made it as high school athlete. When she first arrived at Holy Family for a game against Denver Christian, everybody in the school was like, “Whoa. Marcia is here. This is big.”
Q: So looking at what happened with the shakeup at the Denver Post last week, from your outside perspective, what are you seeing in terms of high school coverage today?
Lombardi: I think it’s more than high school coverage. I think it’s just a lack of community involvement and community responsibility. I think newspapers and radio stations and TV stations in general have a responsibility to the community and when you ignore high schools, which is the root of our community, it’s wrong.
I know financially why they do it. I get it. I’ve been told that. It happened to me at my TV station. They consider it a territorial thing to cover. No one cares about certain high schools taking each other on except for those high schools. But I always felt it was deeper than that.
If you cover the high schools, then they have a reason to cover you. A reason to follow you. It’s just a community, grass roots effort. And when you lose that, you lose the community.
Q: So when a guy like Neil Devlin, who has done this for 34 years, is suddenly out of a job on the paper side, how damaging is that to a metro area like Denver?
Lombardi: I think it’s very damaging because it’s a slap in the face to experience. It’s a slap in the face to contacts. He knows everybody. He knows how high schools operate. He knows the coaches, he knows the (athletic directors). He knows the history. Everyone wants to go young and cheap now and yeah, you can still cover athletics. You can still cover sports. You can still cover it all.
But when you take away the people who have been doing it their entire lives and you tell them they’re not necessary anymore, you can’t tell me that the product doesn’t suffer.
Q: So it seemed like they were going mainly digital and the very next day they layoff Morgan Dzakowic, who heads up their preps online coverage, does it give you the impression that the Post is shying away from preps coverage all together?
Lombardi: Very much so. They’ve taken the lead of the TV stations. Only one TV station in this town, Channel 9 (KUSA), makes an effort to cover prep sports. They actually have a person that’s a prep sports specialist, they have a photographer that covers prep sports, they have a platform digitally and mainstream media that offers prep sports.
They’re the only ones in town. One by one, each of the local stations stopped doing it. And now the paper? It’s sad.
I can remember myself as a kid, you sought that out. It was a big deal to be in the paper, it was a big deal to be on TV. And now these kids today, what do they get? There’s nothing for them. There’s no reward. There’s no gold pot at the end of the rainbow for them.
Q: So when you were the sports director over at Channel 4 (KCNC) and you are a big advocate for high school sports, what are you being told when you’re trying to do something high school related?
Lombardi: We just didn’t have the resources. We can do as much as we possibly can. But most of the time there were conflicts.
If the Broncos have a press conference or a there’s a Nuggets press conference or anything professional sports related and it competes with high school, guess which loses? The high school loses.
It’s unfortunate because we couldn’t devote the necessary resources to get the good stories. I’ve been in this business for 26 years and the best stories are at the high school level. Always. The most pure stories, the most raw stories, the most real stories are at the high school level.
I guess people don’t want stories anymore. They want to follow pro teams. And that’s the message that’s been given to us.
Q: We get into this line of work because we like sports, we like the games. So when did it get to the point that it’s more important to talk about Von Miller cropping John Elway out of an Instagram post rather than a state baseball championship?
Lombardi: Because more people in the community can relate to Von Miller. People in Erie can, somebody that lives in Colorado Springs can. People that live in Aurora, Arvada, they all know Von Miller.
But if you took all those points and said what do you think about Englewood High School, nobody knows.
And I think just that relative unknown is what scares people. But if you grow up here like I did, I know all the high schools. I knew who was playing. I knew what was what.
I think we are a victim of our own growth. Too many people here aren’t from here so they don’t care about the high schools. If you come in here as an adult, why would you care about a high school unless your kid is at that high school?
We become detached because of all the transplants that live in our community.
Q: Even when there’s a kid like De’Ron Davis that will go big time at Indiana and has a good shot at getting an NBA look?
Lombardi: I completely agree with you. I think a guy like De’Ron Davis… my De’Ron Davis was Chucky Sproling from Manual High School. Everybody knew Chucky Sproling. When we were in high school, we’d look at the box score to see how many points he scored.
If you just polled random people in Denver today, and asked them who De’Ron Davis was, nine of out 10 of them wouldn’t have a clue.
It’s not a bad thing, it’s just an unfortunate thing. Because we are not devoting the necessary attention. We in the media have a responsibility to chase the story that means something, not only to the masses, but means something to the local community.
De’Ron Davis is going to mean something to the local community. Just like Chauncey Billups does. Everybody is on the Chauncey Billups bandwagon now that he’s made it as a pro and he’s retired. Back in the day, I remember Chauncey growing up. Everybody covered Chauncey. Chauncey was a big story, he was as big a story as any of the pro teams back when he was the King of Park Hill.
We’re losing that now. We don’t have that association with prep athletes like we used to.
Q: At the risk of getting myself into trouble, is that laziness on the part of the reader or laziness on the part of the media? Or maybe a little bit of both?
Lombardi: I think it’s just a little apathy out of everyone. When I was doing local news, it was easy to send a camera to the Broncos and just get another coach’s soundbite. That’s easy rather than going to a local high school and digging a little bit to find a great story and put that on the air.
It takes more work, it takes more effort and it takes more resources.
I think it’s a little bit of everything. When you take resources away from these media entities then the people who work in those entities have to do what’s the best fit for them. And what fits best is easiest, simplest and most accessible. And apparently what most people think is news.
It’s funny what people think is news. How many different times can you talk about Von Miller’s contract? How many different ways can you cut across that story when there’s a local swimmer who is on the verge of becoming the next Olympian, the next Missy Franklin, and we’re completely ignoring that swimmer because we’re not willing to delve into it.
Q: When did you begin to see that shift?
Lombardi: I saw it shortly after I arrived. I got here in 1998 and when I got here, prep sports were still vastly important to news coverage. Every station had prep reporters, we all covered them very closely.
Year by year, I saw a shift. Staffs got smaller and the first thing to be eliminated was the prep side. It was the very first. Ask any staff in town. And kudos to Channel 9 for at least maintaining that.
But every other staff in town, newspaper, radio, television started chopping off the prep reporters and the prep coverage because it required resources.
Q: So when you look at everything outside of Denver such as Colorado Springs, whose TV stations are very active in preps, same thing with the guys in Grand Junction, the small newspapers throughout the state who’s sports sections are dominated by high school coverage, is Denver just becoming too good for high school sports?
Lombardi: Denver is too big a city with too many pro sports options. When I worked in smaller communities like Austin, Texas there were two things. University of Texas sports and high school football.
You covered both equally. We covered it madly, we were feverish when it came to high school football. We did shows on Friday nights. When I was in Indiana, we did basketball shows.
But Denver is a major pro sports town. You have a lot of different things to hit on, even in the summer. And lost in the shuffle is preps. They’re no longer a priority. There’s pro, college, pro again, Broncos and then preps.
Q: Is it realistic to think preps can get back in that mix or has that ship already sailed?
Lombardi: I think you’ll see prep coverage more on a digital level now. The digital sphere has opened up.
The beautiful thing that has happened in our industry is that local high schools are broadcasting their own games. Students are now doing play-by-play, they’re being reporters because they’re allowed to be. The web has given them that access.
When I was in high school, I would’ve killed to do play-by-play of a game somewhere, but we didn’t have cameras. We didn’t have a studio. You don’t even need a studio, you just need a computer. I can listen to my kid’s lacrosse games on my computer, they’re streamed live. It’s really cool. I like it.
You lose out on the masses because the masses don’t hear it, but the communities that do care about it get a chance to listen to that stuff.
Q: When you see Colorado kids reach that national level, is there a part of you that wants to turn back to the TV stations and the reporters now and ask why they weren’t covering these kids five years ago?
Lombardi: You lose that attachment. I’ll give you a great example.
When I worked in Arizona, I did a high school sports show. It was a half hour, once a week. And I went out and found great stories. I went out and found a kid who went to a high school just north of Phoenix and he was supposed to be the next big thing.
He was 6-foot-7, he jumped out of the gym. I did a standup where he jumped over me to dunk a basketball and I forged a friendship with his kid because he was so good at what he did.
His name was Richard Jefferson.
So 15 years later, I’m at Pepsi Center and Richard Jefferson is playing for the Spurs and this is late in his career. I walked up to him in his locker room and I felt kind of silly. I said, “Hey Rich, I don’t know if you remember me…”
Before I said anything else, he said, “Of course I do. Vic Lombardi. I remember the show, I remember our shot.”
It was really cool to have that association that impacted his life. It was a big deal for him to be on that show. It was a big deal to featured like that because he was a high schooler. Now it happens every day. But when you’re a high schooler, it means so much more.
Q: You work for a station now in Altitude that tries to do it’s part for high school kids. It broadcasts weekly football games, it covers state championships. What does Altitude do that other stations or outlets can take and use to boost up that coverage?
Lombardi: I’ll give Altitude credit in this regard, Altitude doesn’t have to cover high school games because they don’t make any money doing so. It’s not a moneymaker. It’s never been a moneymaker.
They do it, but I think they’re community-minded and they understand that there is somewhat of an audience there. They have the capability, the teams and the resources to get it done.
Again, would I love to see our outlet cover high school sports religiously? Yes.
But it always comes down to resources. At least we cover games. At least we cover the state championships. We cover the Friday Night Light games. So there are things that are being done at Altitude that make me happy.
I just wish everyone did it, that’s all.
