It's been a long two months since we scaled back our operation, but the Metro Sports Report will be returning to its roots this week with in-depth coverage of high school sports.

Specifically, we'll be offering extensive coverage of Xavier High School as part of our new business model as we move forward.

We announced earlier this month that from now on, we'll only be covering the schools, leagues and teams in the Metro area that have strong advertising support in the community. We tried covering everybody, regardless of financial support, but we went broke back in March and needed to devise a new model.

We set a threshold of $10,000 annually in targeted advertising support for us to cover any of the eight high schools in the Metro. Xavier has met that threshold, thanks to its many business friends, but so far the Saints are the only ones.

We're working on all the other schools, but quite frankly there's a long way to go with all of them. Please let me know if you'd like to pitch in and help support your favorite school.

I confess that we're breaking new ground with our revised business model, but we had two choices: Do it this way or go out of business. And if you know me at all, you know I'm too stubborn to quit.

So here we go. We'll start covering Xavier again this week with preseason stories about their baseball and softball teams, then we'll begin covering their games next week with the Metro Baseball Tournament and the start of the softball campaign.

This will begin a full cycle of covering all of the varsity sports at Xavier High School, which has featured one of the most successful athletic programs in the state since the school opened in 1998. And when we cover the Saints, we'll naturally keep an eye on their opponents and write stories about the other teams as warranted.

If an opponent pitches a no-hitter against Xavier, we'll write about that. If somebody rushes for 300 yards and five touchdowns against Xavier, we'll write about that. If somebody scores 30 points against the Saints, we'll let you know.

We'll try to be as fair as possible to everyone.

If you know anything about Xavier, you know that athletic director Mike Winker runs a first-class program with a long list of outstanding coaches. They've always been a pleasure to work with and I'm sure that will continue.

The Metro Sports Report has two other agreements in place - one with a local college and one with a local baseball league - that we'll be telling you about in the coming weeks. We also have a tentative agreement with a major sports facility for coverage, but that won't kick in for awhile.

Thanks very much for bearing with us during our transition from one business model to another. And thanks again for all your kind words and support while we figured this out.

We're back in the game of covering high school sports and eager to move forward.

We'd be remiss if we did not publicly thank the local companies that have stepped forward to support Xavier High School with their advertising dollars. The Saints have terrific friends with Schimberg Piping, Construction Materials, Aero Rental and DK Land Services.

Their ads will be prominently featured on our website and we thank them mightily.