Inside the Cupboard
What a week of sports this past week and not to mention (but yes we will mention it just one more time the FSU / Alabama game with the Seminoles pulling off a 31-17 upset).
Everyone knows my love of sports and trust me every coach from tee-ball to coach Jeff Johnson at Chipola will tell you I will bug the bee-geez-us out of them until I get what I am after. It’s a very big deal for me to have athletes to be able to see pictures and read about their accomplishments in the paper each week.
There is no way I could do my job without tons of folks texting, calling, emailing me information about this game or that game. And yes, I also scroll social media. Last Saturday, I saw a post about MK-8 cross country and I was on that like bees on honey.
Less than 15 minutes later, I had stats (FLRunners.com) is the bomb diggity for up to the minute stats. A few minutes later I had a team picture and 99% of the runners identified.
Two days later I am still working on the final ID but rest assured I will have that last name by close of business today. I do not attend games live anymore – 71 has caught up with me and I realized about two years ago, my time could best be served monitoring games on a variety of avenues (parents / principals / Gamechanger / Maxpreps / FLRunners / coaches). And hear me fuss when we are not notified of a change in game times or days.
It’s a 5-second text or call that avoids us sending a photographer (and we are blessed with multiple photographers) only for them to get there and find out the game was canceled or postponed.
And I’ll fuss equally as much if coaches or their designees only post stats for wins. Win, lose or draw, if two teams play, one is going to win and one is going to lose but someone on both sides did something good.
Many moons ago, Marianna High baseball hosted another Jackson County team.
The visitors went three up, three down. Marianna had eight runs, bases loaded with nobody out in the bottom of the inning. I knew the coach from the other team very well and he looked at me and said, “This is not going to end well!”
No sooner than he had gotten the words out of his mouth, bam, bam bam, triple play ended the inning.
First baseman caught a line drive to first (out number one), tagged first with runner off the bag – justifiably so (out number two) and threw to second before runner could get back – probably not justifiably so (out number three). I rest my case and that’s all from Inside the Cupboard.