By DAVID CAMPBELL
Cleveland Plain Dealer

	100 WAYS TO IMPROVE PREP COVERAGE

Papers from across the country submitted their best ideas from the last year, and the material was compiled into a 137-slide show for the convention. A contact person is listed on each slide.

Here are a few of the highlights:

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution football section, which focused on 11 of the top players and their talents or dreams off the field;

The AJC Yearbook, wrapping up the school year. The section focused on the Players of the Year in each sport, and the person (or cat in one instance) who inspired them to excel;

The all-star section by the Newport News (Va.) Daily Press. The section was themed on the trophies and medals kids won, and used the hardware as props in the photos;

The Minneapolis Star Tribune's Preps Plus section, a four-page broadsheet that comes out each week. Content ranged from agate stat leaders to a cover story on which sport's athlete trains the hardest;

The Santa Fe New Mexican printed a season wrap for an area football team while the team was playing in the state title game. Then it distributed the special section at the stadium while the team celebrated;

The Tampa Tribune's clever method of running game roundups from correspondents. The format is "The Difference:," "Game notes:," "Stat of the Game:" and "Quote of the Game." Makes life easier for correspondents and folks in the office;

The Florida Times-Union went out and measured many of its high school baseball fields and found that several fences were marked to be far longer than they were. They interviewed some pitchers who were not happy about that, for obvious reasons;

And The Seattle Times, whose series "Coaches Who Prey" was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. The series was about high school coaches who befriend and then sexually victimize female players.

The entire presentation can be viewed on the APSE Web site, at:
http://apse.dallasnews.com/convention/workshops/workshops.html