Great things happen when coach and media can work together

Check out tomorrow's Massachusetts Daily Collegian for my sidebar on the women's soccer team. I'm really happy with how it turned out, but I have to give a lot of credit to UMass coach Jim Rudy. I asked media relations to set up an interview with him for the back-to-school issue.

The next day he called me back to set up a time to talk later that week. Rudy offered his cell-phone, home and office numbers without me even asking him. As soon as I got that, I knew this was going to be a great year.

Today I had my second interview with him and brought along my beat partner. He started by telling us that he will give us every bit of information we ever wanted to know and do whatever he can in return for allowing him to critique our writing. It's not something I'm used to hearing, but I have no problem with it.

We went on with the interview and I asked him a lot about the team's struggling offense. Normally, a coach will try to sugar-coat everything with some cliche about how the team is still playing hard and has great camraderie.

But not Rudy.

He gave me all the information I needed and explained some other factors, besides some really untimely injuries, that was slowing the team down. It's really great to have someone who understands the value of having student journalists who cover the team.

It's never easy to write something negative about a team because nobody likes to talk about it, but Rudy answered all of my questions, which made it a lot easier to write my article.

It should be a fun season.