I donned my reporter’s hat Saturday and drove down to the natatorium at IUPUI to cover the Indiana boys swimming and diving championships. I hung out with some swimmers in high school, so I understand how swimmers are second only to wrestlers when it comes to strange high school athletes, but had never been to a proper meet. It was an interesting afternoon.
Category Archives: Uncategorized
I think I’ve passed the Sell By date on any New Hampshire analysis. So, instead, I’ll offer up this link that Brannan Blog political reporter Omar Epps sent my way today. It’s one notable media critic’s look at how the media failed the voters leading up to and on Tuesday night. It’s quite long but full of information.
And there’s one thing we can all agree on, whether you follow politics or not, are Republican, Democrat, Independent, vote or don’t vote: Chris Matthews really needs to go.
I’d be staying up late on January 8 watching election results? It appears, folks, we’ve got a couple races after all.
BTW, thanks to my sister in politics (and really life in general), Omar, for clueing me in on that horrible sound on MSNBC that is apparently to signify breaking news.
Yet another test to see if my messing about has messed anything up.
Should I be concerned that Cait knows how to disrobe herself so early? Some grainy video, taken in low light from a different room, but I think you’ll get the point.
(Trying again. This wouldn’t go through last night.)
I didn’t get this going until late in the game, but some baseball thoughts, wrapped around the last three innings of the Indians – Red Sox battle.
A prominent voice from Cleveland seems to agree with me. Is he reading my blog???
The Colorado Rockies are in the World Series? Seriously? I must admit, I never thought I’d see that happen. To be honest, I didn’t actually see much of it, thanks to those 10 PM eastern starts. I caught a few innings here-and-there either at the beginning of games, or on the nights when my cough kept me awake and I went downstairs for awhile.
I’m not sure what happened to this week. Seriously, it seems like it was just Sunday night and I had grand plans for a bunch of blog posts, a bunch of projects around the house, and so on, and here I am on Friday having accomplished little if any of that. That’s what a cold going through the house will do, I guess.
So, hopefully lots to come next week. Favorite album #2 will be posted for sure.
I will leave you with an admission of a 70s song that, somehow, got stuck in my head and I had to break down and purchase it this afternoon. Thing is, I have no idea why. I didn’t hear it anywhere. It just appeared. So, a raise of hands, how many people remember the Bellamy Brothers #1 hit from 1976, “Let Your Love Flow”? “Just let your love flow, like a mountain stream. And let your love flow, with the smallest of dreams…” Come on, you remember!
Go ‘Hawks!
Now Playing: Let Your Love Flow from the album “The Bellamy Brothers: Greatest Hits, Vol. 1″ by The Bellamy Brothers
So how’d it go? Not bad. I’m fighting heartburn and indigestion today because I found out, after publication of course, that I made a minor but glaring error in my story. The kind of error that I glanced right over but a reader caught right away. Ugh.
But it was kind of cool to go down to the RCA Dome and cover a game as a working member of the media. I got to sit in the press box, along with a couple other writers who were covering the game. It wasn’t exactly Colts-Patriots. And there were maybe a couple thousand people in a stadium built to hold around 50,000. It was a bit surreal. There were four games scheduled, and I was covering #2 of the day. My editor told me to expect a blowout, but it ended up being a close and entertaining game, with the favored team pulling out a 91-yard drive in the fourth quarter to take the lead, then another 60-yard drive to kill the clock.
The biggest thing was that I had to keep stats for the entire game myself. Thanks to a quick tutorial from my editor last week, I had a pretty nifty way of keeping both a running play-by-play and an overall stats sheet. I had practiced the method once with a game on TV, but it still took about a quarter for me to get in a good rhythm where I was quickly noting who touched the ball, what they did, what the result of the play was, and then accounting for it on both pages. It was nice to have a clear and quickly updated scoreboard to reference when I couldn’t do the math quickly on big gains. I was also pleased, when looking at the Indy Star’s small story on the game yesterday, that my stats were in line with theirs, and I even had one scoring play right where they missed the correct yardage. I’m already kicking the corporate owned paper’s behind!
My post-game interviews were pretty brief. I was only able to catch the head coach (our paper only covers one of the teams, so I was only obligated to talk to that coach), so I didn’t get to ask the players any questions. Normally, on a Friday night, I’d have from the time the game ended until 10:45 to compile stats, do interviews, write a roughly 500 word story, and then get it submitted. No way could I have done all that Saturday. I’m glad my first experience came on a Saturday when the deadline was noon the following day. I’m already getting a nervous stomach over my first Friday night game. I’m sure the entire process gets easier, which will make that time constraint easy to work with, but I’m not looking forward to my first attempt at it.
So now I’m officially a professional sports writer. How about them apples?
Now Playing: Are You Experienced from the album “Stone Free: A Tribute to Jimi” by Belly
