With spring sports officially ending last Saturday with Buchanan’s loss in the Division 3 regional finals, I turn my attention to the summer months.

I am going to need your help this summer in helping create better content for our papers.

I know that a lot of our area Little League and Cal Ripken baseball and softball teams have already wrapped up or are nearing the end of their regular seasons.

That is unfortunate because I can remember as the days dwindled during the school year, I got more excited because summer baseball was about to start.

Now it seems like their seasons are over for a vast majority of the players before the school year even ends. What remains are the handful of All-Star teams that spend the rest of the summer playing at tournaments around southwest Michigan and the state.

With that off my chest, let me get back to the original point of needing your assistance this summer.

I first would like to ask teams to submit their photos, along with a left to right identification of the players and coaches, for publication in our four products.

I would also like any team that won a championship this season to submit their photo for publications. That means league champions as well as tournament champions.

With the All-Star season closing in, I would also like to have photos from those teams as well. All photos can be sent to me at the email address below.

With the addition of Hannah Holliday to the sports staff, I would ask like to ask our readers to submit story ideas.

I would love to feature long-time volunteers from the various leagues. If there is a special story about a player, who perhaps is overcoming physical challenges to play the game, we would love to feature them in a story.

Another possible angle would be a long-time volunteer who umpires games. All of these would make for great summertime content in our products.

Please submit your ideas, along with contact information to my email address. I think it is going to be a great summer with your help.

After all, it really is your newspaper.

Scott Novak is sports editor for Leader Publications. He can be reached at scott.novak@leaderpub.com