When you pick up The Baltimore Sun this school year, you will see more box scores than you did a year ago. We’ve renewed our commitment to getting as many of them as we can into the paper rather than running line scores for some sports as we did a year ago. Something that comes along with that commitment is striving to be as accurate as possible.

Accuracy can be a challenge, especially when coaches or managers who call in or e-mail the box scores don’t know the names of some -- or any of the players – who scored for the opposing team. One football coach, calling in a box score this season, knew the yardage for every scoring play by both teams, but he didn’t know the names of any of the guys on the opposing team. When that happens, we can only run the line score. It’s not fair to the guys on the other team. We don’t like to see N/A (not available) as much as we’re seeing it in soccer and field hockey box scores either.

Imagine that one of your best players runs for 200 yards and scores a couple of touchdowns only to pick up the paper on Saturday morning and see N/A where his name ought to be. How about the field hockey goalie who makes 20 saves and looks at the paper only to see N/A where her name should be?

We realize that a lot goes on during a game and the coach can’t be everywhere. We also understand that most managers are students and that they make mistakes sometimes just like their counterparts on the field. We know too that the rain of the last few weekends has been an issue, but we still received a lot of complete results despite the drenching.

We really would like to be accurate with all of the box scores. For many student athletes, this is the only place they will ever see their names in the paper.

One thing that may help is for the visiting team to bring printed rosters to the games, because the home team is usually responsible for reporting the score.

That could also help with spelling names correctly. We take a lot of heat when names are spelled wrong and, yes, we can turn an S into an F and a P into a T sometimes. Still, box scores do come to us with names spelled wrong and we have no way of knowing. When I cover a game, I always ask for a printed roster, because the names aren’t always clear in the score book, they don’t always include first names and the student managers don’t always know how to spell everyone’s name.

Each box score seems so tiny in relation to the rest of the high school sports page, but for the athletes who don’t make the headlines, one box score is the most important thing on the page. Please help us get them right for all the athletes who deserve that recognition.

--Katherine Dunn