As a sports reporter that covers seven school districts and 82 teams, high school athletics reference sites are invaluable.

Websites like Minnesota-Scores.net and QuikStatsIowa.com provide me with comprehensive, up to date information that helps me write more in-depth stories. The only problem is each site lacks what the other has.

Neither site pretends to what they aren’t, though. Minnesota-Scores.net provides scores and QuikStatsIowa.com provides stats. But therein lies the problem — that’s all they provide.

At Minnesota-Scores.net, people are updating the scores of each high school game, boys and girls, in nearly every sport.

Scores are reported to the site via email, phone, text or on the web and then each conference and section’s standings are updated daily. The site even has its own formula to rank teams much like the RPI does in college football.

It helps me keep track of schedules, enter standings onto the Sports page and know who’s favored in any given game. It doesn’t, however, give me any individual stats whatsoever, and with Minnesota sports, that’s where I’m lost.

Enter, QuikStatsIowa.com: An extensive stats reference site that rivals ESPN. It tells me exactly what Northwood-Kensett’s Spencer Capitani’s quarterback rating is the morning after he played, and how many kills per game Lake Mills’ Lindy Pins averages.

It gives me every stat imaginable on any team and any player on that team in the state of Iowa, and coaches are required to enter the information. But if I want a simple schedule with scores or basketball standings from the North Iowa Conference — it’s a mess.

These sites are near and dear to my heart, bookmarked on my browser and clicked on more than J. Crew’s website during its winter sale. But their flaws are glaring and keep me from knowing Iowa teams’ records and Minnesota athletes’ stats.

Fixing QuikStatsIowa.com is simple. It needs to reorganize its website to make scores and standings more accessible and easier to follow.

Minnesota-Scores.net can stay the same but the Minnesota State High School League needs to require high school coaches around the state to enter stats onto its website just like Iowa does. At MSHSL.org, the option to enter stats is available but few coaches do leaving folks like me tracking down coaches and trying to interpret their own handwriting on their notepads.

“Did he have 17 or 11?” is not a question I want to be asking myself this December.