BARTLESVILLE AREA SPORTS REPORT IS ONE YEAR OLD
By Mike Tupa
Aug. 19, 2025
BARTLESVILLE AREA SPORTS REPORT
In many ways this month is a happy occasion for Becky Burch, who owns the Bartlesville Area Sports Report, and for me, who writes most of the articles.
It is literally a labor of love. Other than the welcome generosity of a few people, in either money or services, putting out this website has not been by any stretch a paying proposition.
We’ve done this completely free. Becky has borne the expense and the perhaps couple of hundred dollars others have provided has not come close in offsetting the costs of keeping the website going, gas money for her to photograph athletes and in some cases do reporting and other incidental output.
We hope at some point to begin selling some advertising for what has become a popular free source of professionally-generated local sports news for thousands of people in Washington County and surrounding cities.
Becky and I didn’t start this website with a profit as our primary motivation. We did it because we love the kids, we love the schools and we love the communities.
We wanted to shine a spotlight on the kids and their positive achievements and efforts in athletics.
After the Bartlesville E-E stopped covering local sports — a decision made on a higher level, which started when the company that owns our newspaper stopped accepting the sports articles I was submitting for free — there was a void of local sports coverage in terms of written-emphasis detailed information.
I recognize that KWON Radio and its associated stations do a wonderful job in their realm of covering local sports, including some website reports. I admire them greatly for their commitment to local sports and the community.
Their sports announcers are first-rate, among the best you’ll find in the nation and I know firsthand they truly support the kids and the teams. They truly paint a picture of the action through their radio broadcasts.
But that’s not the same as written, highly-detailed articles that condense the action into several highlights and put a large emphasis in writing on hopefully several of the contributors. People can study the articles at their leisure and read them again and again to capture the flavor of what the kids did and their great efforts.
Just as importantly, people can print out the articles and paste them in a scrapbook, or keep an electronic scrapbook. Becky and I think that’s extremely important. She still has many scrapbooks full of my articles and her photographs from when her daughter played for Dewey and we’ve heard from countless people who have mentioned much they treasure scrapbooks of articles about their playing days.
But our site has provided more than just game coverage. We’ve also published many, many long and heartfelt features of athletes past and present, or the history of former great teams. We’ve kept people up to date on college signings and how local athletes are doing in college sports. We’ve covered gymnastics, Splash Club and other non-school sports activities with the same passion as school sports.
Becky and I have been totally committed to doing something good for our community while utilizing our skills and experience. Between us we have between 70 to 80 years of experience in sports journalism and we enjoy the opportunity to continue to utilize our talents for another generation.
The emphasis, however, goes back to our love of the athletes, their parents and others associated with the teams. We just couldn’t stand the thought of these kids not getting professional-style newspaper-type coverage. Bartlesville and the surrounding cities are too vital and too friendly for that to happen.
The radio station serves local sports coverage excellently. But we believe a community also needs the kind of detailed written coverage, lengthy and well-crafted features and analysis/columns we only can provide. The electronic media keeps you instantly informed and does a good job of providing essential facts and even perceptive "takes". The written-based media follows up with more information, multiple takes and is available for perusing re-reading at any time at one's convenience.
As for me, I’ve employed my modest talents for free in this endeavor to try to give back to the community and area that’s been so wonderful to me in so many ways, including a Go Fund Me fundraiser several years ago. I figure participating in this website is a way I can partially pay back all the kindness and support during the past nearly 30 years since Bartlesville took me in.
Thank you.
