The beginning of Fall...

Well, at least sort of. Fall is football season, my favorite time of the year. Sadly the start of the cool weather part of Fall is still a few weeks away. But hot weather won't delay the start of football. The first Monday in August is the official start of football season around here. It is when the majority of football teams are allowed to have their first practices of the year. It also means I'm about to be busy as hell for the next two weeks putting together our annual football section.

This year's section is 8 pages smaller than last year's... only 144 pages! Many of the photos are file photos from the previous season which requires me to go through thousands of photos from last year. But the other part of it is mug shots. We shoot mug shots of every 11-man football player we cover. There are a few reasons for this. Often it is the only time we get out to cover a lot of these schools. It also gives us the chance to go to every school and talk to the coaches. We do a video interview of the coach and a player for the web and, if we have time, shoot some practice photos. At the end of the first week I put together a photo page to go with

This year I logged a little over 1,800 miles of driving going to all of these schools over a two-week period. I'm not even going to take a guess at how many gallons of sweat I had pour out of me. By the end of the week a lot of the kids talk about how much they are tired of hitting each other and ready for the real games to start. I know how they feel, after the first week, I'm tired of shooting practices and ready for the actual games. The problem is I usually still have another week of shooting practice then then scrimmages after that... just like them.

Post Turkey Day Football...

The great thing about Thanksgiving weekend, well besides leftovers, is football on Friday afternoon, and then another on Friday night. This Friday it was two small school battles. And, all four team were area schools. The first game was a blowout and was kind of expected.

Afternoon football is awesome, the light is nice, I don't have to worry about stadium lights, and even better I don't have to worry about hoping something will happen in the first half because of deadlines.

This Friday afternoon I covered Albany High School vs. Gorman in Graham, about 100 miles northeast of Abilene. This game got pretty ugly. Albany is traditionally a good program, Gorman was outclassed by a bigger and more physical team. Albany ran all over them.

Friday night's game was a lot tighter game. It was a six-man game. Now if you've never experienced six-man football it's pretty crazy. The field is a little smaller, and so are the players and there is a LOT more scoring. Well, there is USUALLY a lot more scoring! The game I covered on Friday was a defensive battle with the final score being 38-24.

Now, I know in a normal game 62 points for two teams is pretty high scoring. But when the winning team is typically scoring in the 70's, and a team scoring over 100 points isn't that uncommon, then 62 points total is a defensive battle!

The game was in Trent, a small town about 30 miles west of Abilene. I was kind of pressed for time, since it was 130 miles from Graham to Trent, after fighting a line of cars to get into the stadium, the game had already started. But, I wasn't too worried since I was expecting quite a bit if scoring. Trent High School has probably the nicest six-man stadium in the country. Most six-man stadiums are tiny crappy little stadiums being played on dead grass, rotting wooden stands, and the original lights that were put up probably 40+ years ago. Trent's stadium was built last year soon after its new high school. I'm told it is the only six-man stadium in the country to play on artificial turf, the reason being it was going to cost as much to run a water line the half-mile to the stadium as it would to just put down turf, so they went the waterless route, and built a six-man Taj Mahal of sorts. There are nice metal bleachers and new lights which aren't half-bad for a high school stadium. The funny things is, despite the nice new stands, people still watch the games from their cars, well it was cold that night.