Whatever It Takes
There was a common theme to the basketball games I cared about over the weekend. Friday the team I covered won their game by 35 points. In an amazing comeback over the past three weeks, my teams are now up to a +7 TMF. I get to cover the #2 team in class 2A this week, so hopefully that improves…
Friday Grab Bag
This week kind of went off the rails yesterday, so I’m going to throw some bits-and-pieces that could have turned into longer, individual posts into a single grab bag to end the week. The biggest obstacle we faced this week came Thursday morning at approximately 3:30 am. I woke to hear the smoke alarms and cable backup box chirping and…
Reporter’s Notebook – Crunch Time
The girls are about done and the boys start playoffs next week. More notes from the gyms of Indiana. Last week I saw the most impressive individual performance in four years of working for my paper. A kid knocked down 9 of 12 three-pointers and scored 34 on the night. It was damn near effortless. This kid is just a…
Reporter’s Notebook
More blurbs from the notebook of a roving sports correspondent. Wednesday I got my second crack at a college basketball game. It’s been two years since I’ve been to a game of the small college we cover, FC. The experience was similar to my last visit. Enjoyed seeing a Division 3 game. Marveled at the size of the gym, which…
Reporter’s Notebook
A few tidbits from the road. I don’t recall if I shared this story in a previous notebook, but late last month I had back-to-back games that were completely awful. In the first, one of our best girls teams, WCHS, won easily but in very ugly fashion. They should have won by about 70 but apparently decided to play down…
Buzzers
Some weekend. Friday night I was on the road, covering one of our better teams, FHS (11-3 entering the game), against the #10 team in the state, MHS. MHS had just lost their first game of the year, one they played without their best player, who is the #2 scorer in the state at nearly 30 ppg. They are also…
Reporter’s Notebook – Another First
High school basketball is in full swing in Indiana now. The girls have been playing for almost a month and all the boys teams across the state now have games under their belts. Friday night I covered my first boys game of the year. It was a lot of fun and was another first in my career. The game started…
Some Notes
It’s hoops season, bitches. One more week of half-assed posting while I write my “novel.” 40,000 words down; 10,000 to go. I hit a couple games in the county girls tournament last week. One was a blowout, as expected. It was 10-0 after a minute and never got closer. The other looked like a great match-up on paper. It was…
What I Watched
Even without a Colts game to suck up time, it was a solid sports weekend. I covered an opening round football playoff game Friday. It was a blowout, but the coach I spoke with seems like a good guy and is struggling to turn around his alma mater. It was interesting to listen in as he spoke to his team…
The Have Nots
I’ve mentioned poor EHS several times when sharing my sports reporting exploits. They are the team that had A) a seven-year losing streak and B) have won only five games in the past decade. It was my week to draw the short straw1 and for the first time, I headed down to cover one of their games. It promised to…