D's Notebook

Tag: reporting (Page 1 of 8)

More Of The Old This ‘n’ That

November 23, 2015 /

The holiday season is officially here! Which you know gets my juices going.

It was weird to be sitting in Arizona last weekend, switching around TV channels while S. was in her conference session, and coming across a Christmas cookie show while it was pushing 80 outside. I spent one year in northern California – we moved west the week before Christmas 1987 – and it was odd to my Midwestern core for it to be in the 50s and 60s over the entire school break. Living farther south, where it is summer-like during the holidays, would be even weirder.

As my Facebook friends know, I got a little head start on the holiday season, violating one of my self-imposed, admittedly silly rules. Saturday it snowed here. Hard. For 4–5 hours. We ended up with about 2” of snow when it stopped. Had it not been near 60 on Friday and the ground been warm, we likely would have had closer to 4”. Between the Winter Wonderland scene and a phone call from my friend Omar in KC, in which she told me she had listened to “Feliz Navidad” on her way home Friday, I cracked and flipped the radio over to SiriusXM’s Holiday Traditions station while I was running errands Saturday. A blatant violation of my prohibition against listening to Christmas music until after Thanksgiving.

I regret nothing.

You know who started their Christmas celebrations too early, though? The jackasses who decided to park a Santa at one of our local malls the FIRST WEEK OF NOVEMBER, that’s who. They need a punch in the head.

Also the Gap, which was already mixing Christmas music into their store music feed back in October. They suck.

I was in Office Depot or Office Max – they’re the same to me – last week and there were Christmas tunes BLASTING on the internal PA. Man, I love Christmas music, but to have to listen to it at that volume for six weeks? No wonder folks in retail get homicidal this time of year.

I began recording Christmas shows Saturday, and C. and L. watched both The Grinch and Elf on the Shelf last night. I don’t have too many years left where they’ll want to watch them, so I have no problem with them watching before Thanksgiving.

And now some other random notes.

A couple travel notes I forgot to share.

While we were waiting to drop our bags at the Phoenix airport, I had a couple interesting encounters. As we inched through the line, there was a family with a young boy, I’d guess he was 4 or 5, right behind us. Apparently he was tired of waiting and began kicking my suitcase. As first he just tapped it. Then he began kicking the crap out of it. His parents didn’t do anything at first. Then, just as I was turning around to give them a look, the dad yelled, “Hey, knock it off!” As I looked back I saw the entire family was wearing Philadelphia Eagles jerseys. I smiled at the boy and said, “I should have known it was an Eagles fan.” As soon as the words escaped my mouth I wondered if I had just made a terrible mistake. Philly fans aren’t know for their warm, fuzziness. Was I about to get my ass beat in the bag drop line for making a sarcastic comment about their fandom?

There was no need to worry. The parents laughed and admitted it has been a difficult fall to be an Eagles fan. I mentioned I was from Indy and the Colts weren’t exactly having the finest season themselves. It all turned out fine.

Later, as we continued to work through the line, we were talking about our friend who always gets pulled out of line for extra security measures. The only reason he can figure is that they do it because his head is shaved.

I mentioned that when I first began flying for work in 2002, I booked a lengthy west coast trip that lasted nearly two weeks.[1] Because of my jumping around the western quarter of the US, all my flights were booked as one-way flights. Which, in 2002, was an automatic red flag. Before every single flight I got pulled out of line at the gate and had my bag and body searched behind the little screen that was just to the side of the boarding area. Twice flights had to be held while security agents went through every single item in my possession. Including, I said to my friends in Phoenix, my contacts case.

As our line doubled-back on itself, a guy behind us chimed in.

“I don’t mean to eavesdrop, but I heard you saying they searched your contact case. That’s where my buddy puts his pot when he flies, because they never search it.”

OK then.

There haven’t been any Reporter’s Notebooks in awhile because I haven’t covered any events since the first week of October. We’ve been busy, and I’m finding it harder to make the long drives I’ve made in recent years to cover games for my paper.

I did get to drive down to Milan in late September. Milan, if it doesn’t ring a bell immediately, is the town/school that won the 1952 Indiana boys high school championship. Which was the team that the movie Hoosiers was based on. I was hoping to get to walk around and check out the museum, but didn’t have enough time before kickoff.

The town, in many ways, feels like it’s still stuck in the early 50s. There are hand-painted signs saying “1952 Champs – Straight Ahead” as you enter town. Milan High School are the Indians. Which, whatever. But there is a bar/restaurant down the street that is called The Teepee. Which is a little weird. But the strangest thing was some of the Milan fans let out an Indian war cry when their team does something good. You know, the noise you made when you were little and played cowboys and indians, patting your lips with your palm. I imagine 20 years ago a lot more people did it. And 50 years ago? The sound was probably deafening.

The next week I was covering a game where Broad Ripple, David Letterman’s high school, traveled south to play a school down near our lake house. Now Broad Ripple is not the most affluent school in the world. Or even in Indianapolis. And they tend to suck in sports. Also, it was a chilly, dreary night. But there was exactly one person in the visiting stands that night. And she was the cheerleading squad’s coach or coordinator or whatever. It was so sparse that when I arrived, and the team was still in the locker room, I wondered if the bus hadn’t made it, or we were about to see a forfeit. I felt sorry for the Broad Ripple kids that no one in their families wanted or were able to make the 45-minute drive to watch them get their asses kicked. The final was 56–8.

Finally, I was lined up to cover the Class 4A football state championship game this weekend. IF the Catholic school we cover, RHS, won their semi-state game last Friday. They were on the road, down near Cincinnati, playing a team they beat by 21 in the regular season. I downloaded the app of a radio station down that way that was airing the game so I could listen. RHS fell behind 14–0 early. They had a long drive to start the third quarter but turned the ball over on downs inside the five yard line. They got an interception but gave it right back. They ended up losing 21–0. So no trip to Lucas Oil Stadium this weekend for me.

  1. Big mistake. That was brutal. But I did spend the weekend with friends to break it up.  ↩

Fun With Exercise

September 22, 2015 /

A super-busy start to the week. I’m attempting to wrap up the four basketball previews I’m writing. I was minutes away from submitting one earlier this morning when I realized I worked off two different files yesterday rather than putting all my updates into my final draft. So I spent two stressful hours today combing through to find what belonged in the final draft, what did not, and then rewriting the whole thing. Kind of blew my whole day.

Tonight we’re off to the semifinals of the city kickball tournament. M’s team is playing another undefeated team. We have no idea how good they are. They could be awesome and rolled through a tough division. Or they could have been kicking teams by 30 runs like M’s team did and have a deceptive record. I think all the coaches (and parents) are a little nervous. We’ll find out if that was misplaced stress in a few hours.

Sunday C. and L. came up with their own workout plan. We’re not sure what exactly caused this, but they spent the afternoon coming up with exercises and writing them down on pieces of paper. Then they closed to door to our bonus room, where I do my workouts, and got to sweatin’.

Their routine is pretty great. Here it is; spellings are all theirs:

10 seconds of craking your back 2 ways
10 seconds of hamies
10 seconds of bakword hamies
10 jumping jacks
butterfly for 10 seconds
cross your legs and touch your toes for 10 seconds
hurtle streatch for 10 seconds

And then there was this:
title

On the flip side is this:
10 seconds of thoes bakwards

That made us laugh out loud. We could imagine what was going through C’s head, “Well, I’m not sure what you call this, so I’ll just draw a picture.”

Best we can tell is it is some kind of squat thrust, or maybe a standing and then lying-down yoga pose. The picture leaves lots of room for your imagination.

Another component of their workout plan was to skip treats after dinner for a week. They put a big sign on the refrigerator that said “No treats foar C. and L. all weak. Sunday-Saturday.”

When they got home from school yesterday, I asked L. why they gave up treats. Her response, “I didn’t want to. C. made me do it.”

I told her if she didn’t want to give them up, she didn’t have to. It was her choice. She disappeared for a few minutes and then came back with a new sign. She slapped it on the fridge and threw the old one in the trash. The new one says, “No treats for C. all week.” And at the bottom, in smaller writing, it says, “Sorry C. I wanted a treat. Love, L.”

Great stuff!

Reporter’s Notebook

September 1, 2015 /

Two weeks of the Indiana high school football season are in the books. Throw in a few previews I’ve written, and it’s been a busy couple of weeks.

The previews were largely uneventful. I’ve been doing those long enough where I have a pretty solid formula in place. Every now and then I run into a coach who is difficult to reach on the phone, which is frustrating and causes delays. This year I had two.

One flat out refused to talk to me on the phone. He kept suggesting that I drop by the fields during practice. Even when I told him I live an hour away from his school and that the phone call would likely take only 10 minutes, he refused to talk. Another coach acted like it was a monumental pain to spend a few minutes on the phone, and then coughed, sniffled, sighed, and mumbled the entire five minutes we raced through her roster. Most coaches, even if they aren’t great interviews, understand that this is about their players, not about them. They’ll work to make sure we get the right players highlighted, their names spelled correctly, etc. This is the first time, in six years of writing previews, I’ve had coaches who were this difficult to work with.

On to the games…

Football week one I drove about 40 minutes east to watch our Class 3A school, IC, open their season. They went 9–0 against a weak regular season schedule last year then lost in the last minute, by a point, in the first round of playoffs. When I got to the press box, the college-aged guys who were doing the local cable broadcast were running through IC’s roster. They asked me what I knew about the kids and I shared a few insights. Then one of the announcers said, “What do you think of Coach G.?”

Coach G. is IC’s coach. He’s one of the top ten coaches, in games won, in state history. His teams are always good, they threw the ball a ton even before that was the style, and they tend to put up a lot of points. In fact, lots of folks don’t like him because he has a reputation of running up the score. And I’ve heard some stories about his behavior toward his players in practice. I needed to answer this question very carefully.

“How so?” I responded with a grin.

“He’s not coaching tonight,” the announcer said.

“WHAT?!?!?”

“Yeah, he’s suspended because of what happened in their sectional game last year.”

And then it came back to me. He threw a fit at the end of their final game last October and got thrown out of the game. Which apparently earned him an automatic, one-game suspension by the state high school sports association.

I sent a text to my editor to see if he knew about this. He did not. He asked me to go find the athletic director and get official word on cause and length of suspension. I made a lap of the field during warmups and couldn’t find the AD. My editor said to keep my eyes open, he’d likely turn up at some point.

So then the game starts. The hosts ran right down the field in their opening possession and took a 6–0 lead. IC had a long drive that stalled and ended on downs. The first quarter ended in about 20 minutes, which was a great pace.

And then the second quarter blew the hopes for an early night apart. It took just over an hour of real time. IC scored 35 points, giving up 8 along the way. Lots of passes, which stopped the clock. Three turnovers, which stopped the clock. Man, that thing took forever.

Fortunately the second half went pretty quickly. I never saw the AD so I ran down onto the field after the game and hoped some IC coach would be obvious as the guy in charge for the night. I grabbed the guy who talked to the team in the post-game huddle and he gave me the details on Coach G., a few good comments about the game, and I filed my story easily before our 10:15 deadline.

Week two I drove down to my favorite school, good ol’ EHS. Things aren’t as bad as they were down there when I first started writing for the paper. But they did get pounded pretty good in week one by a team that was winless last year. I wasn’t counting on a close game.

It was ugly quick. Touchdown on the third play of the game. EHS threw a pick six on their third snap. Then they gave up five more touchdowns before halftime. I was able to write 90 percent of my story during the break then just kind of half paid attention during the second half.[1] My worry was how to deal with the coach after the final whistle. He’s new to the school, so I had no idea what his temperament was like, especially after such a profound beating. And he was an offensive lineman in his playing days, which were only about 10 years ago. He is the first coach I’ve had to talk to who is significantly bigger than me. I was a little nervous about approaching him after the game.

It ended up being fine. He wasn’t happy, so he was rather terse in his comments. But while he has at least 150 lbs. on me, I’m still about two inches taller then him, so I could look down at him and pretend I was not intimidated by his size.

Oh, and there was some discomfort in the press box as well. The guy sitting next to me, who was running the clock, was making vaguely racist comments all night. I didn’t hear what got him started, but I heard him telling the announcer that “…that whole Confederate flag thing is bullcrap!” Then EHS has one black player, who did not show a ton of initiative on the night. He whiffed badly on a couple open-field tackles, didn’t chase down a fumble that was in his vicinity, etc. The guy next to me was seething. Fortunately he never dropped any of the bombs I was fearing. He did talk about how lazy that kid is, which based on his play that night, might be entirely true. But when a guy defending the Confederate flag makes those comments, the last place I want to be is in that conversation.

I’m once again writing some previews for the state basketball magazine, which means I’m just putting a bunch of stats and quotes the publisher sends over into a specific format. It’s kind of tedious and doesn’t pay much. But it is always cool to take the girls to the bookstore in December, find the magazine, flip to my section and show them my name.

This week I take a break from reporting but will go watch two of the top three teams in the state play each other. There is a personal angle on this game I’ll share next week.

  1. Normally we keep detailed stats and file a full boxscore as well. But for some reason our editor has not explained to us, we’re not doing that this year. At least not yet. So when it’s 45–0 at halftime (that’s correct; the other team missed four PATs), I don’t have to track every meaningless yard in the second half once the starters begin subbing out.  ↩

You’re On Your Own

May 28, 2015 /

It’s a tent-pole requirement of parenting to always be comparing the lives of your kids to your own childhood.

We point out the ways our children are more fortunate than us: “I didn’t get to go to Florida until I was 31. You’ve been there three times before you turned 9. Stop complaining!”

We observe the changes in how parents monitor their children today. For example, it seems like most of my generation had free reign to play wherever they wanted for as long as they wanted. We’d leave the house, wander the neighborhood, and check-in at home for a snack or lunch or to grab a required toy then take off again. My mom had no idea where I was about 90% of the time. Today, we put strict limits on our kids. “OK, you can ride down to the W’s mailbox, but no further. And you better stay where I can see you from the front window.”

I was thinking about situations like these last night as I drove to cover a high school baseball game. Why then? I was leaving the girls behind, on their own, for more than just a few minutes for the first time ever. They had roughly 90 minutes between when I left and when S. would get home.[1] I fed them snacks before I departed, leaving strict instructions not to eat anything else until their mom got home. They knew not to answer the door if the bell rang, and to stay inside unless there was an emergency. They understood that they could text/FaceTime me, or another family member, if there was an emergency. But they also knew not to text me that a sister was bugging them. And so on.

Of course, they did fine. They’ve had a few shorter periods home alone over the past eight months or so, thus we weren’t jumping into the deep end on our first attempt.

Still, I was nervous leaving them. Which seemed really weird because I began coming home from school and staying home alone for hours when I was seven. Yes, I was a Latchkey Kid. I never burned the house down or suffered any serious injuries while unsupervised. But I also didn’t have two siblings that could lead me into trouble. I was reasonably responsible and generally was a rule follower, so I avoided situations where major trouble was a possibility.

As I drove, I thought of all the things that could go wrong. I was less worried about general nonsense that resulted in injury than some kind of fluke event that the girls would not know how to handle.

There were no panicked texts, no angry phone calls when the spouse arrived home. When I returned around 9:00, the house was still standing and all the girls were either safely asleep or winding down in their rooms.

This was kind of a big window to leave them alone. I’d prefer not to have to do that again right away. But it is also nice to have a little bit of trust in them, allowing us the freedom to let them stay home while we run to the store or other errands, go exercise, or just need to take something to a family member across town.

  1. 5:30 first pitch 45 minutes from home required an early departure.  ↩

Reporter’s Notebook

February 12, 2015 /

It’s been a rather slow, uneventful winter sports season. Until the last week, that is. I’ve been working a little less, as the family schedule has been busier this year than in the past. And I’ve been lucky enough to cover our best girls basketball team more than any other squad. So a lot of solid games to write about, but not a ton of stories to share.

Things first got interesting last Wednesday, when I headed south for a boys basketball game on a snowy night. I knew the roads were slushy and slick in spots, but probably left about 5–10 minutes later than I should have. Still, as I traveled the clock kept showing me getting to the school just before 7:30, regular basketball tip time in Indiana.

And here’s the thing: unless there is not a JV game, varsity contests never begin at exactly 7:30. The JV game usually runs until 7:15 or so, then it takes a few minutes to clear the court and get the ok to start the 20-minute clock for varsity warm ups. Then there are introductions, the national anthem, and often some kind of presentation crammed in as well. Add it all together and, more often than not, the varsity game is tipping closer to 7:40, if not later.

Well, as I got closer to IHS, the roads got worse. I slipped and slid into the parking lot at exactly 7:30. When I ran inside, the lady running the ticket table said to me, “You guys always make it just in time.” I told her I was worried about being late, and she responded, “Don’t worry. You made it.” I signed in, thanked her, walked into the gym, and looked at the clock.

There were three minutes left in the first quarter.

WTF?

They didn’t just start on time, they started early.

Never, in eight seasons of covering high school sports, have I missed the beginning of a football or basketball game. And here I was, at a game that I expected to be both very good and very close, missing the first four minutes and change.

Fortunately it was a three-point game at the time so I had not missed a decisive run. I was able to get to the press table and begin taking notes before the quarter ended. Any chance at a full box score was gone, but I could rely on the official book for scoring totals.

I admit, though, I was completely flustered. I never really got a feel for the game. How many shots had the kid who hit four-straight taken and made/missed before I walked in? Did a key player pick up two fouls in the first four minutes and that changed the attack of his team? So many details I was missing.

Fortunately, it was a game between two county teams, so afterward I talked to both coaches, got some good quotes, and built most of my story around their words and some highlights by the game’s best player, who scored 22 points.

I got home safely after but did not feel good about the night.

Last night I went out to cover a girls first round sectional game. Long-time readers of the site will remember by friends down at EHS. Somehow I had missed them, in both girls and boys hoops, all season. As I waited for the night’s first game to wrap up, the boys coach walked over, said hello, and gave me grief about getting paid double to watch this game.

Anyway, EHS won four games in the regular season, and were playing a Baptist school that had 13 wins. The catch, though, was many of the Baptists’ wins came against home school teams and other non-state athletic association schools. The computer ratings said EHS was a one-point favorite.[1] Watching warm ups, that seemed accurate. EHS wasn’t great, but they were athletic and seemed to have a general plan. Their opponents looked terrible. My general rule is if a team looks bad in high school basketball warm ups, odds are they’ll suck when the game begins.

That held after tip off. The Baptists hit a quick 3-pointer and then EHS ripped off a 26–0 run over the next 11+ minutes. The Baptists missed 21-straight shots. EHS was drilling threes, getting steals, and converting transition layups. After all the painful games I had watched this school play over the years, I was finally getting to see them not only rout someone else, but do so in the state playoffs. I began mentally writing my story, lauding how they bounced back from a terrible start to the season against a very tough schedule to bring a two-game winning streak in sectionals and get a big first-round win. The lead was 25 at the half.

Then someone decided to switch teams at the break. Or something like that. The Baptists, who looked half-asleep in the first half, began trapping in the half court and pressing in full court. They got a steal and a score. Then another. Then another. They opened the third with an 8–0 run. By the end of the quarter, the lead was down to 12.

To start the fourth, the Baptists got a 9–0 run. The lead was down to three. EHS couldn’t get the ball inbounds, let alone find a good shot. They turned the ball over 20 times in the first 11 minutes of the half. And the Baptists’ best player [2] was knocking down 25-foot 3-pointers and drawing fouls each time she went into the lane. The far side of the gym was full of screaming fans, loving the come back. Behind me, the EHS parents were either yelling at the refs, or sitting in shock. I was sitting directly behind the EHS bench and during a time out, I could see that the girls had moved beyond anger and confusion. They were flat out scared. There wasn’t a sign of confidence in any of them. If someone asked me to lay money on who would win the game during that time out, I would have put serious cash on the Baptists.

I began dreading writing the story of how EHS blew a 25-point lead and having to ask their coach what happened.

Thank goodness, then, that they came out and got two straight scores at the rim, then hit free throws late to win by 11.

The cherry on top of the night was, between a later start,[3] lots of fouls and time outs, an injury, and a technical foul that involved a huddle by the officials to determine the shooting order of the free throws, I had about 45 minutes to write. Less, after knocking out the stats and putting the box together. Which bummed me out. I still think there was a good story in there, but I couldn’t find it in the limited time I had.

Some nights a story comes together on its own. Other nights, my brain runs through the key elements of the game and struggles to find that really good central thread that ties it all together. Last month I had a game that went to overtime and left me about 15 minutes to write a game story. It ended up being one of my best of the year. I think last night’s game deserved something of that quality.

Baring some surprises this week, that was likely my final girls game of the year. The boys are still a couple weeks from playoffs, and I have a swimming sectional on my calendar already.

  1. My annual “Yes, there are computer ratings for high school basketball in Indiana” reminder.  ↩
  2. Their only good player.  ↩
  3. Grumble, grumble.  ↩

Reporter’s Notebook

November 11, 2014 /

Well, the Hinkle Fieldhouse stuff was technically a lengthy reporter’s notebook entry. But I still need to get you caught up on the last month of work.

The final regular season football game I covered came over a month ago, the same night as game one of the ALCS as a matter of fact. My team was down 24–0 before the first quarter was over. It had poured rain all day and was still raining steadily with chilly temperatures. The jerseys were so muddy that we could barely read uniform numbers in the press box. So the stats guys, the clock operators, and I would all yell out who we thought made the tackle or the catch or had the run. If at least two people agreed, we decided to go with that player.

Things got really interesting at halftime when the opposing coaches climbed down from the roof to go join their team. The stats guys started yelling at them for running up the score. Which they kind of were. You don’t throw the ball downfield when you’re up by 50 and it’s not even halftime. Sadly there was no fight, which would have been the most exciting thing about the night.

Then I covered the CGHS boys soccer team through a few rounds of the state playoffs. They were really good this year, and I was set to cover them in the state championship game if they made it that far. Unfortunately, they got bounced in the semi-state round. Which was another new thing for me. The game was in Evansville, too far away to send a reporter. So I followed the game on Twitter and then called the coach as they bused home to get some details for the story. Oh, as I was following a pretty crazy 4–3 game on Twitter, the Royals were building, and then blowing, a lead in game four of the World Series. Symmetry. Or synergy. Or something.

Then two weeks ago I covered the cross country semi-state meet that was right up the road from my house, on the course where I have been running lately. It was pretty sobering to see the girl who won, who I’ve reported on for a couple years, her knock out a course that I run in just under 30 minutes in just over 18 minutes. And in the boys race, the winner just missed breaking 15 minutes.

I’ve also written one girls basketball preview and am in the midst of writing the boys and girls swimming previews.

But, in the spirit of burying the lede, the big news is that I began working for another paper last week. This is the county paper that covers the county I actually live in. I met the new sports editor when I was covering a team for my original paper that came north a month ago. We chatted, he gave me his email address and said to send him a message if I was ever interested in working closer to home.

Last Friday was my first assignment for him. I got to cover the Catholic school that’s right up the road in their football sectional championship game. It ended up being a really good game. I was actually covering both teams, so by the time the game ended (at 10:00!) and I had a chance to talk to both coaches, the extra hour this paper allows for deadline really came in handy.

This paper covers eight (I think) high schools, from the second-biggest in the state down to a 1A school, so it’s a similar spread to my other paper. Although up here the big schools have more high-end talent. My local high school sends kids to D1 in every sport every year. There are at least two guys playing in the NBA from schools I will follow. And it will be cool to get to cover, and learn more, about all these schools that are in my backyard as opposed to two counties away.

The bummer is this new paper does not pay very much. Not that my other paper does, but they certainly pay more and throw in mileage, so when I have to make a long drive at least the gas is covered.

But it’s a chance to get some more work, hopefully closer to home. If I can swing it, I’d like to keep taking assignments for both papers. I have seven years of knowledge and relationships built up down south. I’d like to keep those. And it will be nice to occasionally not have to leave 90 minutes before a game starts to get there on time. We’ll see how that all works out.

Oh, and the other aspect of working for this new paper is I’ve finally put my Twitter account to use. While using Twitter to send out scores was never discouraged by my OG paper, neither was it something they asked or encouraged us to do. Some writers did it; others did not. I just never tried to get it into my game night workflow.

But the new paper asked that we send out updates at least quarterly. So, dutifully, I did just that. As I got more comfortable jumping from the game to my stats to Twitter, I sent out a few in-game updates when big plays happened. The paper retweeted my stuff, so by the end of the night I actually had a new follower. I’m not ready to jump into using Twitter full time, but it was kind of funny to actually send things out when I’ve just been using it as a tool to read since 2008.

Finally, tonight I’m off to cover the opening night of girls high school basketball in the state. I’ll have the CG girls, who are ranked sixth and are always fun to watch.

Hinkle

November 10, 2014 /

4073415

In the first six months I lived in Indiana, back in 2003, I had a pretty solid sports run. I went to the RCA Dome for a Colts pre-season game. I went to a Notre Dame football game in South Bend. I’m told that I went to West Lafayette for a Purdue football game, although that day is rather fuzzy thanks to a huge amount of alcohol. I went to an IU basketball game in Assembly Hall. And I sat in a suite at (then) Conseco Fieldhouse and watched the Indiana Pacers play the New York Knicks. The next winter I went to a boys high school basketball sectional championship game and watched two future NBA players battle it out1.

It took a few more years, but in time I made it to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, first for practice and qualifying for the Indy 500, and then for an actual 500 mile race. I also visited Victory Field for an Indianapolis Indians game.

There wasn’t much of the Indianapolis sporting experience that I missed. Well, expect for one glaring omission that became much bigger over time.

I had never gone to Hinkle Fieldhouse for a Butler basketball game. Which, you would think, was something that I would have knocked out very early in my time here. But, for whatever reason, likely because most of my friends here are IU and Purdue alums, no one was ever asking me to go with them. And when I mentioned it to those Hoosiers and Boilermakers, it was always greeted as a fine idea, but not one there was ever any great motivation to follow up on.

After over 11 years, I finally crossed that notable checkbox off Saturday. And I got paid to do it!

I went down to Butler to watch them play Franklin College, a Division III school in the town where my paper is based, in an exhibition game. I got to walk through the media entrance. I got to go into the press room and page through the materials the two sports information departments had put together for us. I got to walk out and sit right next to where a national writer has a permanent reserved seat. And after the game I could have sat in and talked to the interim Butler coach and a couple players as they sat on the dais and took questions from the assembled press.2

Thus, it was a bit of an odd experience. I knew going in my story would be less about the game itself, which proved to be the lopsided blowout you would expect when a solid DI program plays a young DIII program, than about the experience of the FC team. So I sat and casually took in the action, getting a feel for the flow of the game but not taking detailed notes or keeping a running play-by-play. If I needed stats, I just looked down at my computer to see the instantly updated stats Butler was providing. Hell, the guy next to me pulled up the Minnesota-Iowa football game on his computer and either watched that or sent out Tweets the entire time.

Our seats were not great. We were stacked into three rows that are back in a corner, well behind the baseline. And, given the opponent, the crowd was not great.

Still, I was finally in Hinkle! They just finished a big $36 million refurb of the building. It was fascinating to compare the inside of the arena, which is all shiny and new now, with the guts of the building. As I was waiting to talk to the FC coach after the game, I looked around and saw big steel doors, railings, and structural supports that had clearly been installed when the building opened in 1928. I didn’t make a thorough tour of the building, but it definitely has that older than old school feel to it.

The playing area itself has an odd setup. The court runs across, rather than with, the long end of the building. There are small balconies above the ends of the court, with seven-row student bleachers underneath, and then the side walls of the building hit. But on the sides of the court, the lower levels slope up gently before hitting the upper sections, which reach high and far away from the court. When you look across the court, and see the seats high above the opposite side, it’s easy to imagine those classic images from old high school state championship games where it seemed like there were 40,000 people watching instead of just 15,0003. You can envision entire towns packed into the building to watch their teams play for the state title, the air heavy with smoke. Like Allen Fieldhouse, there are large windows around most of the building. Unlike Allen Fieldhouse, though, some of the windows are covered with shades.

1398184460000 crowd

The game-day atmosphere was pretty cool. For the non-Indy folks, Butler is located in the heart of an area of town that is full of large, gorgeous, old homes. My Kansas City friends should think of the area between the Plaza and Brookside. Rather than being on a large campus, it very much feels like you’re still part of the neighborhood as you’re walking to the Fieldhouse. Folks are parked on side streets, or just walking over from their homes a few blocks away. I would imagine it’s a whole lot cooler on days when a Big East school comes to town and the every seat is packed.

Because of the opponent, it was tough to gauge the game day feel inside the arena. Attendance was listed at just over 6600, and that may have been a little optimistic. There were plenty of “OOOHS” and “AHHHS” for the plethora of dunks the Bulldogs threw down, but there were never the kinds of roars I’ve heard from this arena on TV when teams like Gonzaga and Xavier and Stanford came in and lost in recent years.

I’m glad I finally made it to Hinkle. I wish I had done so much sooner, and I definitely want to get back for a regular season game and sit in regular seats to get a better feel for the place. Fifteen years ago, I bet most college fans around the country didn’t know much about Hinkle. You could say, “You know, where they played the last game in Hoosiers,” and people would get it. But until Butler’s rise, I don’t think it registered with people the way names like Allen, Cameron, and the Palestra do. I still don’t know if Hinkle is quite in that league, but people certainly know about it. It’s pretty cool that I can tell people I’ve been there now, though.

Oh, and a quick note about Butler’s team. They were down a little last year, mostly because they lost like 800 games either on the last possession or in overtime. They have some good talent this year. They are athletic, long if not huge, and have shooters. And they’re deep. They have three freshmen, all between 6’6’’ and 6’8’’, who look like they could turn into really good players. There’s some uncertainty in the program right now, with head coach Brandon Miller in the midst of a leave of absence for an undisclosed medical issue. I think it’s safe to say Butler has very long odds to ever reach one, let alone two-straight, national title games again. But I wouldn’t write them off in the post-Brad Stevens era just yet either.

  1. Josh McRoberts and a young Eric Gordon. ↩
  2. I did not because I was waiting for the FC coach to come out, and didn’t really need Butler comments for my story. ↩
  3. Through renovations over the years, capacity has been whittled down from 15,000 to just 10,000. ↩

Reporter’s Notebook

September 16, 2014 /

Mannnn do I have a fun story to share. I just hope I can do it justice.

To set things up, I’m two-thirds of the way through a three-week run with our 3A school, IC, who is currently 4-0 and ranked #7 in the state. Two weeks ago I had them against last year’s runners-up from class A, and IC manhandled them by 30 points. Last week, against an 0-3 team, IC won by nearly 50. And this week they’re against a pretty bad 0-4 team.

So that’s been fun to watch and I think my stories have been solid.

Two weeks ago, it was in the mid-90s at kickoff. Five of us were packed into a tight press box and it was downright nasty. Fortunately we were wearing shorts and t-shirts and had a fan. The kids on the field had it rough. There were players puking all over the place. One puked just as the ref was placing the ball for a point after. As he ran off the field, the players from both teams tried to slide over to the left hashmark. The ref shook his head and brought them back to the center of the field. That was fun, I bet.

And then last week it was dreary and in the low 60s at kickoff. People were wearing coats and it was kind of chilly in the press box. Midwestern weather, man.

The best part about last week, though, was the radio crew that was there. I have no idea why, but this 0-4 vs 4-0 game was the Game of the Week on a nearby county station that carries a high school game each Friday night. It was especially odd because neither school was in the same county as the radio station.

Unlike the student broadcasters I listened to early this year, these guys were pros. They were cheesy, over-excited, and worked in cliches the way the great masters worked in oils. But they had been doing this awhile and were very smooth.

What attracted my attention was their great attention to detail. Not necessarily the details of the game, but the details of their broadcasting requirements. You see, pretty much every aspect of the game was sponsored by one local business or another. So there were sponsors for each first down, each sack, each kickoff, each big hit, and so on. What was really impressive was these sponsors changed from quarter to quarter, and the guys never flinched. They might misidentify a player, or get confused about whether the kick returner was crossing the 25 or 35, but they always had their sponsorship down.

I’d like to offer some examples that I scribbled down in between tracking my stats. I wish my text renderings of these could do justice to the quality of Randall and Jerry’s work. Imagine these being said with great enthusiasm.

“Johnson carries it to the 37 which makes that another Bob Wilson Ford first down!”

“And Lacy is pulled down by Mann in the backfield for a Furniture King Mattress and Home Decor sack!”

“Dylan picks it off for a Davis Country Diner interception!”

“Wow! What a big hit! That one was so big that the guys up here in the press box all let out a collective ‘Whoo!’ I think that qualifies as a Freiburg Food’s hit, don’t you Jerry?”
“I sure do, Randall. And they got him behind the line of scrimmage, so it’s also a Brother’s Body Shop sack!”

“We’re about to start the second quarter, which is brought to you by Springhill Christian Center and Bookstore.”

These guys were on it. Sure, they oversold a few plays, but their gusto was enjoyable to listen to. I would imagine their audience was rather small, so you might as well go big.

My other reporting news is that I worked on some basketball previews for a magazine that gets distributed around the state. I wrote about the boys and girls sectionals that most of the schools I cover are in, and then the same for the sectional that I live in.

It’s kind of a weird process. Coaches are supposed to turn in a one-sheet survey by early summer and then these get divvied out to writers around the state. We take all that info, funnel it into 3-4 paragraphs per team, then write a little intro for each sectional. It’s not terribly difficult, which the pay certainly reflects. It was cool to write a few words about a couple kids that will be playing D1 ball down the road, including one kid who is a top 20 player in his class and has offers from pretty much every school in the country.

I had to track down a few coaches who had not turned their info in. I took a little pride in that one of the coaches of a school I regularly cover apparently never turns his info in. I left him a message and he quickly called me back and was very friendly. And then he called me back the next day with an update on a player he forgot to mention. So I felt like I was showing the editors I worked for a little something extra since I was able to gather that school’s info just a few minutes after they told me that was one of the toughest coaches in the state to pin down and be prepared to write based on last year’s roster and stats I could find online.

Reporter’s Notebook

August 26, 2014 /

At last it was back out into the field Friday night as high school football season began here in Indiana.

I caught a pretty nice assignment, following a top 10 5A team up north to Lafayette. The stadium was the nicest high school stadium I’ve ever been in. I had to take a damn elevator up to the press box! And it was completely enclosed. I don’t normally like that, because you can’t hear the crowd or the whistles of the refs. But since the heat index was up over 90 and the air was thick and nasty, I was willing to sacrifice the sounds of the game for a little air conditioned comfort.

The game itself was a good one to cover. There were plenty of big plays. There was a nice storyline with a sophomore QB making his first varsity start. There was a kid who is getting serious D1 attention who was in the middle of three pretty spectacular plays. And then, unfortunately, there was a serious looking injury late that caused the game to be halted for nearly 20 minutes and then the last 3:35 cancelled because of the injury and score. Which added a degree of difficulty to the night as I had to crank out the story faster than expected after the delay pushed things back.

But the real fun of the night came from sitting next to the host school’s student broadcasting team. Really it’s a damn shame I had to keep stats and pay attention to what was going on down on the field, because I would have preferred to just sit and scribble down all the amusing things these kids said.

It was a sophomore duo and they did not do much preparation for the game, from what I can tell. Their pre-game show consisted of reading through the starters list and commenting on each player.

“He’s a good kid. I’ve known him since fifth grade.”
“He’s a nice kid.”
“He’ll start at left end. I don’t know him, but I heard he’s a good kid.”
“He’s a big, strong kid. I saw his squat over 500 lbs. this summer. And he’s a good kid, too.”
“He’s back for his third year starting. He’s a pretty good kid.”

And on and on. In fact, I heard no phrase more than “He’s a good kid,” all night. Which made me smile and chuckle to myself each time I heard it.

Also, before the game, they decided to find out where the school I was covering is located. So one looked it up on his phone and then shared with the audience exactly how far away it is. Which is fine, although it seems like you would have wanted to do that before you went on air and then seamlessly work it into your commentary.

One of the pair was slightly older than the other, apparently closer to 16 than 15, while the younger kid had just turned 15. I heard the older kid mention the younger’s recent birthday and then make a crack about how, soon, he’d be driving his partner to games. Ahhh, near-16-year-old concerns and humor!

The same kid mentioned to his audience that it was a beautiful early evening as he looked out over the west side of the stadium. Only problem was we were looking east. Not sure if he meant from the west side or just doesn’t know his directions.

Once the game began I tuned out a lot of their play-by-play. I kind of had to do that because there was another radio crew to my left that were older and more professional and also louder. With competing voices coming from both directions, I did my best to ignore them and focus on the field.

Later, though, the student broadcasters brought up a girl from the soccer team and another from the cross country team to discuss their teams’ outlooks for the season. When the soccer player sat down one announcer said, “She number two on the field, but number one in my heart.”

I had to try hard to keep my laughter in after that one.

I only caught bits of the interview, but I think he was doing more flirting and trying to make her laugh than actually discuss soccer. Which I can respect. I would likely have done the same 26 years ago if my high school had a radio station and I had a chance to broadcast our sports events.

The final thing I wrote down was a doozy. My team was the Warriors. In the second half a home runner got stood up by pretty much the whole defensive line. One of the announcers was ready for this. He said, “Ricksy is stood up (pauses, raises voice) BY A TRIBE OF WARRIORS (long pause). I was kind of proud of that one.”

Mercy.

Like the flirting with the soccer player, I could both shake my head and tip my cap to the guy. If I was on the mic back in the fall of 1988, I would have had a sheet of stupid nicknames and catch phrases and “clever” turns of phrase that revolved around last names and team mascots, and not been afraid to use them liberally. I was a 17-year-old dumb ass who thought he was smart and amusing and still thought Chris Berman was funny. Oh, and I was deep into first generation hip hop. If my over-the-top attempts at humor didn’t cause the faculty member advising us to yank me off the air, I’m pretty sure dropping RUN-DMC, LL Cool J, Public Enemy, and Eric B & Rakim references would have done the trick. I doubt Raytown, MO was ready for that.

So a solid week one. Other than the injury, of course. My team won by 29. I got to see some decent football. Watched probably the second most talented kid I’ve had to cover. And got some cheap entertainment in the process.

I’m off this week as we’re out of town for the holiday, but should be back on the road in two weeks.

Reporter’s Notebook

May 21, 2014 /

I was back on the diamonds last night, watching a game in the county baseball tournament. It was your average 21-0, 5 inning blowout.

WHS scored four runs on four hits, two walks, and three wild pitches in the first. Then they went down 1-2-3 in the second. I went from thinking it would be a blowout to wondering if EHS could keep it close.

They couldn’t. Ten runs in the third, seven in the fourth, game over in a tidy 90 minutes.

EHS has a bunch of young pups; no seniors, several sophomore and freshmen starting. That youth showed. Lots of bad mistakes in the field that turned a mild rout into an embarrassing one.

I was sitting on the EHS side and one dad was having a hard time keeping his frustration in. After the catcher dropped an easy throw that would have nailed a runner, the dad jumped up and muttered, “Come on, 8! Catch the dang ball!” Then he walked away and paced behind the stands for a few minutes. A couple innings later, after an outfielder dropped his second fly ball of the day, the dad popped up, cursed/grunted to himself, shook his head violently, and moved up to the top of the bleachers where he stood staring at the trees for awhile.

I share his misery because I bet I’ll be in that mode if the girls are still playing sports in high school. Badly wanting them to win and having a hard time dealing with the mental errors and misplays.

These lower tier games don’t have an official scorer. I think each team keeps their own book, so there’s never any clear statement on what is an error and what is not, for example. Which I kind of like. Because that means I get to decide for myself. And I’m firmly in the camp of people who feel that how errors are assigned is stupid. A) It’s all a judgement call by someone not on the field. B) I think scorekeepers are way too lenient in giving hits versus errors. My view has always been if a defensive player does not have to go some ridiculous range to get the ball, and it hits his glove but he can’t hang on, it’s an error.

I assigned five errors yesterday. Initially I gave out a sixth, but then I realized an outfielder had run about 30 yards to get to a ball that popped out of his glove. When I saw him take his position again, and noticed the distance, I changed the call.

A couple years ago I did a game that was played downtown at the Indianapolis Indians field. There were about ten people on my side of the press box, and the guy working the PA on the other side was someone I knew. After the shortstop butchered a sharply hit ball, the PA announcer slid open the window separating the sides and asked us press folks if we thought it was a hit or an error.

“Error!” I quickly said.

He nodded, closed the window, and E flashed on the scoreboard. A couple guys in the press box gave me a look, not challenging but more offering me a chance to provide justification.

“It was hit right at him, he had it in his glove, and that’s an easy throw,” I said to nods around the room.

Finest moment of my career!

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