Rainy Day Abilene...

Last Saturday was supposed to be a pretty easy day, two football games, starting an hour apart and then one other event and done. These "easy" days never seem to work out that way. As I was pulling into the parking lot at Hardin-Simmons rain started pouring down, then the thunder and lightning came. I was hoping this would be short and the big rains would come in later at night. Too bad the weatherman was wrong, again.

I sat in the press box for a little over an hour waiting to see if they were going to play the game. I grabbed a shot while I was there. After getting word the game was going to be delayed at least a few hours I figured it was time to go look for weather photos. As hard as the rain was coming down and with all the lightning in the area, it was a pretty futile trip. Everyone was indoors and rightly so, sadly this didn't make for great photos.

By the time I got back to the office, I was told the football games that were supposed to be 1pm kickoffs would finally start at 7pm. When I got to Hardin-Simmons the rain was still coming down steadily and I was standing in about an inch of water on the sidelines. The game was sloppy and the real grass field didn't suck in the water nearly as well as it did across town at McMurry who has FieldTurf. I gotta say though, Hardin-Simmons was a lot more fun to shoot in that night! With all the water on the field the players were sloshing around and sliding all over the place. It wasn't real pretty to watch but made for some nice photos. The field goal shot pretty much summed up the day. I never thought I'd have a photo of a plain old 27-yard field goal make the front page of the newspaper, but when you get 3.5 inches of rain during the day, things seem to change.