OPINION: Get me a pencil and paper for this story

Oct. 12—Times have really changed in the newspaper business.

Back when I started in the late 1970s there were no fax machines or internet. Cell phones didn't come onto the scene until the mid-1980s, and all you could do with those was make and take calls.

If you wanted the news, you read a newspaper.

One of my previous publishers, Steve Trosley, told a story about when he was a cops-and-courts reporter in Minot, North Dakota.

They would give him a roll of dimes and he would make his rounds to area police departments for his news. After each stop, he would call back to the office with his information.

One day, Trosley said, he came back with no reports.

His boss gave him hell for doing nothing and wasting part of his day.

Trosley's response? It was 10 below zero and even the bad guys were smart enough to stay home.

When I covered sports in the early years, we got most of our information over the phone. We also had to take obituaries over the phone. Those were a lot of fun.

I remember taking track meets from New London High School coach Bob Knoll over the phone — one event, one name and one result at a time. And when we were done, we had to do the girls' races. I swear, sometimes it took more time to take the meet results over the phone than to run the meet itself.

On Saturday nights during basketball season I would turn the TV to the Mansfield station and turn on my VCR. They would run all of the scores and I would replay it Sunday morning.

I'd gather all of the scores and go into the office, where I would do all of the write-ups and update the standings.

All of the schools would get our papers during the season. We would send papers in the mail to all of the NOL schools out of the area — Shelby, Galion, Bucyrus, Tiffin, Upper Sandusky — and that's how the coaches compiled their scouting information.

Now, all of that information is on the internet. No more newspapers, no more scouting — it's all hand-delivered on your computer.

And that takes all of the fun out of it.

I used to write a column every Tuesday when I talked to all nine coaches in season — football in the fall and boys' basketball in the winter.

Back then, the coaches were great and it was a pretty good read.

One time I wrote a column talking about Monroeville's playoff chances and if everything went right, the Eagles could meet St. Paul again.

St. Paul coach John Livengood, who on Friday night collected his 300th career victory, always had fun with my column. I think he spent some weeks working harder on my column that I did.

"Monroeville playing St. Paul again ... they don't want to play St. Paul again," Livengood wrote on the top of my column.

"Look at what the Monroeville Reflector printed this week," Livengood scribbled on the side of my column.

He would underline parts of my column and leave little comments — kind of like what my teachers did in elementary school.

Now that was fun. That's the way it used to be.

They would call that bulletin-board ammo. My columns used to end up on a lot of bulletin boards.

But those days are over. Now, everybody gets on their computers to watch films, badmouth the competition and read about what everybody else is doing on Facebook.

There is an old story about former St. Paul coach Mike Gottfried and how he got his players fired up the week before the Flyers played Monroeville.

As the story goes, all of the St. Paul players had a dead fish on their porch the morning of the game. You don't think that fired them up?

The rumor was Gottfried was behind the fish and he did it to fire up his own team.

Is that what really happened? I really don't know, but it sure makes for a good story.

Now, somebody will get a picture of a fish and email it to everybody on the other team.

No smell. No slime. What fun is that?

Over the last 30-plus years I have either been at, wrote about, listened on the radio, or — like Friday night's 60-52 win over Edon — watched on the internet, most of Livengood's 300 victories.

Add to that St. Paul volleyball coach Nancy Miller's 600 career victories, and you are talking about almost 1,000 wins between those two and three state championships by the Flyers teams.

Miller's 2002 state championship team is going to be inducted Friday into the St. Paul High School Hall of Fame.

Like me, those two coaches are old-school. Times certainly have changed since they started coaching, but the results have stayed the same.

I have enjoyed following and writing about Miller and Livengood during the last 30-plus years, even when it was with a pencil and a pad of paper.

Joe Centers is Reflector community editor. He can be reached at jcenters@norwalkreflector.com.