My First Try Was a Mess
Alright, so yesterday I thought finding West High School’s 2024 football schedule would be dead simple. I started off like most folks probably do – I opened my laptop, fired up Google, and typed “West High School football schedule 2024”. Hit enter, feeling kinda smug. Boom! Tons of results. Awesome, right? Not so fast.
I clicked the first couple links. One took me to some national sports site. Schedule looked old, like maybe 2022 or somethin’. Not helpful. Another link went to a page that just listed every high school team in the state alphabetically. Seriously? Scrolled down forever trying to spot “West High”. Gave up after 3 minutes. Next link was some ticket reseller site trying to sell me tickets to games that weren’t even listed. Total waste of time. This was getting annoying already.
Digging Deeper – Still No Luck
I figured the official school website must have it. Makes sense, right? Went hunting for West High School’s homepage. Their website… wow. It looked like it hadn’t been updated since 2010. Tried the “Athletics” section. Found a page about the football team, pictures and coach’s name. Cool. But the schedule? Nope. Zip. Zero. Zilch. Just a “Coming Soon!” banner that looked like it was frozen in time.
Got desperate. Hopped onto social media. Checked the official school district Facebook page. Mostly lunch menus and board meeting notices. Scrolled through their posts. Found one about last year’s football banquet! Progress? Nope. Still no 2024 dates. Checked Twitter/X – some parents complaining about parking at games last season. Not helpful for finding this year’s kickoff times. Super frustrating.
The Lightbulb Moment (Finally!)
Just as I was about to throw my coffee cup at the screen, something clicked. I remembered seeing a tiny contact email on the school’s useless Athletics page earlier. Something like ‘athletics-dept@west-high.*’ (or whatever their domain is). Went back, found it. Okay, last shot.
Wrote a quick email:
“Hi there! Big fan of the team. Trying to find the 2024 varsity football schedule to plan our fall. Any idea where I can find it online? Thanks so much!”
Sent it off feeling a bit silly, like why should it be this hard? Went to bed.
Woke up this morning, checked my inbox. Bingo! An email from the Athletics Department! Attached? A simple PDF titled “West High Varsity Football Schedule 2024 FINAL”. Exactly what I needed! They also wrote:
“Thanks for reaching out! We’ve had issues getting the schedule updated on the main school website. Here it is. Some parents also ask us directly on ParentSquare for last-minute changes.”
What Actually Worked
Turns out, the fancy websites and big sports listings were useless for West High this year. Here’s what actually got me the schedule:
- Direct Email: Seriously, find that contact email on the school or Athletics section and just ask. People forget how powerful a simple email can be.
- ParentSquare App (Maybe): The email mentioned it, so that seems like a good place for updates once you know what to look for. Didn’t need it myself this time.
- Asking the Source: Sometimes the most obvious solution works best. School staff actually answered and sent it right away.
So yeah, maybe not ‘easy’, but totally doable once you stop trying the stuff that should work and just go direct. Got my schedule printed on the fridge now! Let’s go West High!