The Metro Sports Report is happy to announce that we have added a Recreation Calendar to the MSR website for groups, organizations and individuals that would like to publicly list their events and tryouts.

We will post a short story about each event or tryout in our "Today's Lineup" section on the home page. In addition, we will include each event or tryout on a permanent list that can be found by clicking on the "Rec Calendar" tab at the top of the main home page.

We are charging $25 per entry, which we think is a reasonable and fair price for this service. In most cases, an organization or individual will see a significant return on their $25 investment in terms of additional registrations.

The Recreation Calendar is available for all youth and adult programs. However, it is not intended for organizations such as the YMCA or Cedar Rapids Recreation Department.

Over the years, I have been approached as president of the Metro Sports Report by people who wanted us to post stories about their tryouts for youth sports teams or to write a notice about one of their tournaments. We really did not have a mechanism for handling that material, but now we do. The $25 fee will cover our time and effort.

It will be OK to list events that have multiple offerings. For instance, you might be holding tryouts for a youth baseball program one week for 8U, 10U and 12U and holding tryouts the next week for 9U, 11U and 13U. That's perfectly all right and will be considered one tryout.

There is no limit to the number of sports and age groups we can handle on the Recreation Calendar. We'll list the entries by sport and category, whether it's basketball or badminton, horseshoes or hockey.

Once you click on the "Rec Calendar" tab on the main home page, you'll be taken straight to the "Rec Calendar" page and will be offered a drop-down box near the top of the home page where all the other tabs are offered. Simply click on the drop-down box where it says "Select A Sport" and go to the category you want.

Please send us an e-mail with your events and tryouts for the "Rec Calendar." Also, please make the $25 check payable to "Metro Sports Report" and mail it to me at 2803 Q Avenue NW, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, 52405. My e-mail address is This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

We're confident you'll find our new "Rec Calendar" a valuable service for the community.