It’s that awkward time of year between high school sports seasons.

But this is the time I like to start to recharge my batteries because before you know it, August is here and high school sports is firing back up.

It is also a time I like to take a look back at what we did and see if there is a way to improve on our coverage from last year.

About halfway through the 2013-14 sports season we changed our focus and our deadlines.

Because of those changes, we started doing more feature stories and previews and left the game coverage of most contests to our website.

I think for the most part we were very successful in getting at least one feature story for each of the five high schools we cover on a regular basis and for each of the sports they sponsored.

Some schools received a few more features than the others, and although we try to keep things balanced between our schools, features are a different breed than game stories.

You can’t just force features in order to keep things “fair and balanced.”

Did we miss a good feature or two? I am sure we did. That is not because we didn’t care or because we ignored them, but rather it is because we may not of known about them.

That’s where our readers come in.

I am asking you for the coming year to give us a helping hand. With a limited staff, it is somewhat tough to be everywhere all the time.

But that doesn’t mean we have to miss out on a good story.

Coaches, athletic directors, parents and even friends are invited to send me a story idea.

After all, you may have been at a game that we were not. You may have witnessed someone doing something special that didn’t show up in the game information provided by the coaches.

Those are the types of stories we are looking for. Those are the players we want to feature on the pages of our newspaper.

They don’t have to be the star player or the game’s leading scorer. They could be a player who came in, only played a few minutes, but because of his or her efforts, changed the game.

As the old cliche goes, “pictures are worth a thousand words.”

With that in mind, I would also like to ask our readers to submit photos from a game they made have attended, especially on the road.

We have a few really good photographers here at Leader Publications, but with so many sports in the fall and spring, they cannot be at every game.

I know when I am out at games, I notice a lot of people sporting cameras. If you get a great shot, send it my way and it could quite possibly end up online, in the printed edition or both.

With the explosion of social media, people usually know the outcome of the game before we can even get a story on the website.

That is one of the main reasons we changed from being focused on game stories to writing features and previews.

The Shining Stars feature was well received and I think Breaking Down the Numbers worked out well.

Hopefully you agree.

Scott Novak is sports editor of Leader Publications. He can be reached at scott.novak@leaderpub.com.