State Track, Day 2...

After what seemed like a brief nap after four total hours of rain delays the day before it was time for day two of state track and this was supposed to be the long day. In the past Class 5A was all by themselves for the Saturday night meet in Austin. This year though after splitting Class 1A into two divisions they added the 3A meet with the 5A. The problem with this is it used to be that we usually only had one or two races to shoot on Saturday night and I was usually done fairly early on Saturday to make up foe the 12-15 hour day before. Not this year.

We had to get there early on Saturday for the field events, plus the 1A Div. I and 2A running events in the afternoon session. Once again it was an afternoon of a lot of shooting and not much time to edit. At least this time I had more time to edit photos and I had all my 1A and 2A photos sent before the 3A/5A session started. It also gave me time to edit a lot of the slideshow photos from earlier, giving me less work to do on the other end.

The bulk of the really good athletes for us are in Class 1A and 2A. So many of the races I was shooting in the evening session weren't going to change a whole lot of what needed to make the newspaper. Also, there weren't near as many people to cover. I even had a few breaks with as much as 30 minutes between the races I needed to shoot. I made sure to take full advantage of this running to the tent to edit and send photos when needed. Saturday seemed to go by a lot smoother. Maybe because of the weather delays the night before screwing things up. Either way, I ended up having more photos, mostly because of more athletes and more events, but things seemed to go a heck of a lot smoother.

State Track Day 1...

Like a lot of the UIL events this year things got changed around this year for state track too. Class 1A got split into two different divisions. Division I was doing some of their field events on the first day but the running events were being run on Saturday. Division II, which was had a ton of teams that we cover was all being run on Friday, all the field events as well as the running in the evening session. This not only made for a really long day, but also, very little time to sit down and edit photos between events. Since I had someone in almost every one of the Div. II events. To add to that there was a 2 hour delay in the morning to open things because of a thunderstorm.

The delay put all of the field events on a rolling schedule which meant I didn't have any time to run to the tent to edit. So, I spent most of my dinner break editing photos instead of eating (not that it would hurt me to miss a meal or 6). By the time the running events started I was still a little behind with no photos sent. Part of this is I didn't want something put on the page in case I got something I liked better or it fit with the story being written. In the back of my head I was thinking to myself that a rain delay wouldn't be the worst thing to happen. However, I didn't want the two hour rain delay that we eventually got.

The second rain delay really threw things off. The one good thing that did come out of it was I was able to get pretty caught up with a lot of the photos I already had. Plus I was able to send a bunch of photos with the possibility of getting more. After the rain delay I would shoot a few events and if I wasn't trying to edit in camera I was running up and editing between the 1A events I was shooting (the Class 4A meet was going on too and we have no 4A schools that we cover), or I was shooting an event from the top of the stands in the tent as my photos were moving or downloading a card. It wasn't the ideal situation and made for a damn long day, but it had to be done. It's a good thing I enjoy shooting track... and it's happening again, so I got to go back to the hotel for a nap before starting over again.

State Golf Day 2...

The second day of state golf was a lot like the first one. I was running around my a chicken with its head cut off. Spending only a couple of holes with each of the local golfers then moving on to the next ones as well as throwing in running around Austin to multiple courses. Eventually ending up back where I started. The one nice thing about such a long day was the awful, cold windy weather that started out in the morning turned out to be a really great day for golf as everyone was finishing up their rounds.

State Golf, Day 1...

In the past shooting state golf has been a really busy, but not overly long day. This year, however, instead of the normal two teams qualifying for the state tournament, the top three teams from each region qualified. This made it a lot tougher since all the teams could no longer be on the course at one time. So, instead of state golf being over around 3 or 4, it was close to 7 or 8 when everything finally got finished. And with 39 players spread around over three different courses it made for a lot of walking (more than 10 miles) and not a lot of time to spend following any particular players.

One the first day the weather was cold and windy, like 25mph steady winds with gusts in the high 30's. This made for some interesting golf to say the least. It also made for a lot of shots coming up short or going off target, often landing in the sand traps. That may not have made for the best scores for the players, but it did make for some nice shots.

Bulldogs in the Final 4...

I guess since I'm more than a month behind I really need to start catching up... All year long the Wylie boys had shown some real signs of greatness as a team and their run through the playoffs was really proving what the team had already knew. During the regional tournament they beat two really good teams, including Kennedale, who had been ranked #3 in the state. The Hirchi team they beat to qualify for the trip to Austin many said were even more talented than the higher ranked Kennedale team.

However, the team they would face in the state semifinals, Dallas Madison, was coming in looking and playing like world beaters. In the first quarter of the game Wylie was doing a real good job of playing their game and keeping it real close. At the end of the quarter, though, Madison hit a big three and in the second quarter they blew it wide open. Then, things didn't get any better in the third quarter. Madison ended up blowing out Wylie in a game that never even looked close. It was a sad ending to the season of the best Wylie team I've seen step on the court, they were just outmatched by a much more talented Madison team, there's no shame in that.

I've always felt if I were in a game like this I'd rather get beaten by 20 points than 2. When you lose by that much, you've lost to the better team, there's no question, when you lose close, you're always questioning yourself looking back at a few plays that could've gone either way trying to figure out what you could have done different. And two days later, Madison beat Houston Yates to win the championship, there's no shame in losing to the better team, especially when they're the best team in the state.