Baring something crazy happening this weekend, it appears my basketball coverage season is complete. We have four teams that are playing in tonight’s sectional semifinals – three in the same sectional – and even if two survive until regionals, our staff writers will have dibs on their games next week.
I didn’t work as much as I’ve worked the past two seasons, but thanks to favorable assignments over the last month of the season, my teams made a big comeback and left my Total Margin Factor for the season at +22. Four-straight double-digit wins wiped out the huge deficit I faced in early February. So thanks to those four teams for making it an enjoyable end to the year.
In addition to working less, it was a less eventful year. I think some of that comes with not seeing as many teams. I covered our best girls team twice and didn’t see the next-best girls team at all. In years past, I’ve covered both of those teams 3-4 times in a season. On the boys side, I saw our best team for the first time last week. I had averaged four of their games each of the last two years.
It’s all luck of the draw. Two years ago I was lucky enough to cover two amazing sectional games, both of which were decided in the final five seconds. I spent a lot of time with two teams that year, which made it both more interesting and the stories easier to write. This year there was a lot of meh.
Now comes the usual lull before the girls county tennis tournament in mid-April, and then sectionals in tennis, softball, and baseball in May. I’m hoping for better weather than last spring, when I was rained out five times and had to stand in rain for two of the three events I got to cover. Before you know it, I’ll be counting down the days for football to start.
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