A nightmare on the Iowa high school sports front is having a ripple effect on media outlets in the region, including the Tribune.

Quik Stats, a website that stores statistics for the Iowa High School Athletic Association and the Iowa Girls High School Athletic Union, has been down since early November. According to the website, Quik Stats is not accessible because of technical difficulties.

“Multiple hard drives have failed, and engineers are attempting to recover the data,” the site states.

Coaches in Iowa are required to submit their stats online to the website after each game, and if they don’t have their statistics turned in before a certain period, they forfeit a spot in the postseason. The site has data from the last four years of Iowa high school sports.

How does this affect newspapers such as the Tribune and other media outlets?

The Tribune, along with scores of other newspapers, radio stations and TV stations, rely on these statistics as they are reporting the news. Not only is this site important for media; it’s also important for the coaches — and the players themselves.

The Tribune had slated to run its All-Area football and volleyball teams for two Sundays in a row, starting this past Sunday; however, this will now be delayed. These statistics are needed to help us make the best-informed decision on the players we choose to recognize.

Sure, we could dig through all of our old stories and try to tally up the information the old-fashioned way, but with covering seven high schools — five in Minnesota and two in Iowa — this would be quite the task for our sports editor, who already is in the middle of putting out the winter Sports Yearbook, plus covering all of the other day-to-day duties.

We ask for your patience in putting out these All-Area teams as we wait to see if the data will be recovered on Quik Stats. Sometimes, technology doesn’t always pay off.