i can conjure lightning.

This is a re-post from one of my earliest blog posts, but it seemed timely given that it’s football season.  This time of year I still get a lot of questions about how I ended up covering high school football for the newspaper.  Here’s the (moderately) exciting true story of the rumbling, bumbling, stumbling origins of my sportswriting career.

 

“So, how did you get that gig?”

That’s pretty much the first thing people ask me when I tell them that I’m covering high school football for the local newspaper.  The simple answer is, “I applied for it.”  But the truth is, I really don’t know how – out of the thousands of people that live in our area – I ended up landing the job.   The editor – by way of giving me a tryout – sent me to a game that otherwise was not going to get covered.  If I turned in nonsense, or just didn’t get anything in on time, then I wouldn’t have gotten paid and they would have been out nothing.

Here’s another truth – my sports-writing career almost ended as quickly as it began.  As part of my duties, I have to keep offensive stats for both teams, which basically means that I have to write down – in shorthand – what happens on every single play, as well as break out and compile yards by individual players.  Do you have any idea how fast a high school football game goes when you’re trying to write it down?  I can tell you…it’s fast.

So there I was at my first game, having cajoled my way into the press box, and nervous as hell.  My hand was actually shaking as I tried to write things down, and within one minute of play I was already behind.  I was panicked.  There was NO way I was going to be able to keep up with this.  Then…a miracle.  The great lightning storm of 2009 blew in.  The game I was covering was postponed just 2 minutes and five seconds in, by which point I was already three minutes behind on the stats.  Whew!  A reprieve.  Eventually the game was postponed until 3:00 Saturday.

By Saturday afternoon I was more mentally prepared for the speed of the game and what I needed to be watching for on each play.  The record-keeping went much better, though it was by no means great, and I still wasn’t keeping up with the player-by-player numbers.  I had to compile them later.  The game ended at 5:00, which gave me 7 ½ hours until my deadline.  (On a normal game night I would have about two hours to submit my stats and the story.)  I made it with 8 minutes to spare.  *eye roll*   The editor was pleased with my article but was concerned with how long it took.  (Duh, me too!)  I assured him that the main problem was the stats and that I knew I could get much, much faster at it.  (Was that really true?)

I spent that Sunday practicing.  How?  I watched the Herbstreit Challenge (high school teams from across the country) on ESPN and practiced keeping stats for hours, getting quicker and quicker with each quarter.  And when the next Friday night came around, I was ready – game stats and article were turned in on time, and my story was front and center on the sports page.

Now, I suppose it was just blind luck that my very first game was delayed because of weather.  But the fatalistic (and clearly egomaniacal) part of me still sometimes thinks that a lightning storm came through – postponing nearly a hundred local football games – just so I would get a second chance at being a sports-writer.  Granted, it’s probably not true, but you might want to think twice about crossing me.  There’s a remote possibility that I can conjure lightning. 

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