By the time you read this, I’ll have been the sports guy at the Plant City Times & Observer for one year and one day. Time flies when you’re having fun!
I’m glad that the past 366 days have played out in the way that they have, for the most part. (But getting sick last Friday morning, missing football and being quarantined to the couch all weekend was not fun.)
I’m glad I can look back on my first day, which I spent copy editing and interviewing members of a Flugtag collective, and say that I’ve grown quite a bit as a journo. And, going through some of the photos I took that week, I can also say that I’ve kind of learned how to use a camera since then.
Thursday might have been the big day, but this particular Friday, Sept. 19, is also meaningful for me. We’ve got the Battle for the Redman Cup, between Plant City and Durant, and last year’s matchup was one of my first assignments on the Plant City sports beat.
That game — which was awesome, by the way — brought about a series of firsts for me.
I had never ventured out of the press box (or bleacher/table setup, if you count Naples-First Baptist Academy) to cover a game before. I had tracked all of the stats through the window and relied on the photographers on the field to turn in our shots.
Last year, they stuck a camera in my hand and had me shoot my first real football photos. Thankfully, Mike Eng was around to shoot the game with me. And, if you checked out last Friday’s game photos, you’ll see that he hasn’t lost his touch since then.
I had never done a recap and created a photo gallery in the same post before — I was used to scrambling to the nearest computer around 10:45 p.m. to get the stats and recap filed by either 11 or 11:30 p.m. Now, after spending many late Friday nights in our (maybe) haunted office building, I’ll never complain about how much of a hassle that is again.
I had never been on the field for a rivalry game before. I’ve covered a few lesser rivalries than this one, and some with more history, but actually being on the sideline to experience a game like this is a huge contrast from watching it unfold in the press box. It makes gathering information about everything other than stats much easier for piecing a story together.
Sure, there have been plenty of times when I’ve wished I had a stringer on the field to take photos for me, while I did stats in the press box, but few things feel as good as when you glance at a photo you just took and know that you got a killer shot.
It’s been an interesting transition, but moments like that make it worthwhile.
When I was in J-school at Florida Gulf Coast University, I would occasionally hear from friends that being a sportswriter is probably one of the coolest jobs out there. After one year — even though I’m not covering pro sports — I’d say they were right.