Hockey -- Anecdotal Ledes

In this assignment, most people did a very nice job with basic ledes. Another more complex approach for leads is the anecdotal lede, where you highlight a personal story as an example of a larger issue.

Here's one anecdotal lede/nut graf combo I made up for this assignment:

Last year, Jacob Stevens played field hockey with female classmates at Okemos High School. But he won't get the same opportunity this year, simply because he is a boy.

"I enjoy playing the game and I haven't had any of the female players on the team complain about my being there," Jacobs said. "If we can't play with the girls, we wouldn't be able to play. There are not enough boys interested to create a mens' field hockey team."

The Okemos School Board dismissed Jacobs' view, voting unanimously Tuesday to bar boys from playing on girls' teams, effective immediately.

Now, look at how this changes the more typical straight lede/detailed nut graf/telling quote package. The telling quote is paired with the anecdotal lede. The nut graf ends up sounding more like a straight lede.

But what we aim to do here is to humanize the story, in hopes of building relevance with the audience by hooking the lede less on policy and procedure (the school board decided something) and more on what this means for everyday people like your readers.

People may or may not care about school board decisions, but they may care about people and their stories.

Anecdotal ledes can also help set context and meaning through a human example. Let me show you another made-up anecdotal lede using a different person:

When Sandra Adler played field hockey for Okemos High School 30 years ago, her teammates were the same as her: all gils. But when her daughter followed her mom onto the team last year, she shared the field with both girls and boys.

"I just don't think it is healthy mentally or physically to have the boys and girls playing on the same team," the elder Adler said. "There probably are girls who want to play on the boys' football or baseball teams, but they are not allowed."

The Okemos School Board agreed with Adler, voting unanimously Tuesday to bar boys from playing on girls' teams, effective immediately.

This lede emphasizes context through history: this is something that used to never happen; now it's happening, and thats what spurred the board's action.

How do you think these lede approaches work? Which one do you think works best? Or is an anecdotal lede the best approach here?