Monumental Sports Network should invest more resources for high school sports

Monumental Sports Network will officially launch tomorrow. And most of the coverage will undoubtedly be on the Washington Wizards, Mystics and Capitals. After all, they are why Monumental Sports & Entertainment bought the network from NBC last year.

Regional sports networks, including the now-former NBC Sports Washington, have started to get stale when they aren’t airing games. There aren’t as many live reporters anymore for daily news shows, many of which don’t exist anymore. And it won’t be easy for them to be the exclusive provider of games for college sports.

I saw this in the comments, but Monumental Sports Network should spend some more time highlighting high school sports and bringing their commentators out for selected games.

They could include:

• Marquee football games between the traditional powers in the DMV and when they cross state boundaries, especially the public school programs.
• With boys and girls basketball season approaching, it would be fun to see a true DMV tournament with Virginia, Maryland and D.C. public and private schools competing.
• On the hockey side, we could also see a prep tournament that does something similar.
• And our area could also air baseball, softball and lacrosse games in the spring.

Monumental has already done some of this in past years. Though the TV network opens tomorrow, Monumental Sports Network had an in-house operation for nearly a decade on streaming-only platforms. And they did air high school games, giving some rising reporters and analysts time to shine.

Balancing out the coverage among D.C., Maryland and Virginia on TV will not be easy. And it’s important to balance out the private school vs. public school coverage as well. But I think seeing more dedicated coverage to high school sports on television will be more interesting now that Monumental Sports Network is (almost) here.