State Softball

Thursday was the first day of a really busy weekend. In fact, Thursday was the easy day, all I had to do was drive to Austin, shoot Early High's school's softball game in the state tournament and put together a slide show for the web and I'm done. It sounded easy enough. I'd seen this team play before and they were very good. However, when a team gets no-hit in its game, getting all those photos becomes A LOT harder!

I know from covering last year's state tournament that pitching usually dominates in the state tourney. So, I wasn't expecting a whole lot of hits, but for the team to get no-hit wasn't expected either. One thing about Early is they don't make a lot of errors, which they didn't make in their game either, which would have been great for them had they gotten some hits, and maybe scored some runs. Instead, it was just another zero on the board.

The one thing about these big games I can always count on is the end of the game and the reactions that it brings. It's pretty much a given that when you lose this late in the year there will be some emotions. There was. And it's a damn good thing too, because other than a mediocre at best second base shot I got pretty much nothing from the game. I guess it's a good thing this game was played at 4pm so I knew there wouldn't be deadline issues and I could hang around and watch the players get their medals. The top photo of the girls hugging happened quickly, I saw the two girls holding hands and kept my eye on them, then the other two hugged. I let out a big sigh of relief after that... I knew I would at least have something to send in. The good thing about this is I wouldn't have a scheduling conflict on Saturday having to shoot a softball game and the state track meet at the same time.