Riding in Style to the Easter Egg Hunt...

This was a nice take on something that I've been shooting pretty much every year I've been here and was a nice twist to how Easter Egg hunts have been shot in the past. Earlier in the week we had gotten an email saying the Baird Easter Egg hunt would let kids ride on fire trucks to the park for the hunt. This may have been one of the few times I thought it might be cool to have grown up in a small town. I mean, what kid never wanted to ride on a fire truck? Especially when you're riding on a fire truck to a park to get free candy!!

When I got there I talked to some of the people organizing it and their explanation was even better. Instead of all the kids showing up at staggered times and them having to essentially herd cats from trying to start their egg hunt early, they all show up on the fire trucks and they start a few minutes after every one gets off the fire engines. Brilliant. The other great part about going to the area towns is how well-received you are by the people there. It's a nice feeling.

Hell Week, Day 2...

So, day two always seems to be a little easier, well at least shorter than Monday is. Mostly because tennis is only one round. So, I pretty much reversed my schedule from the day before. Going to Lakeway first to shoot the championship tennis matches. We had four different tennis players and doubles teams in championship matches. It made for some really nice photos, however, I'm guessing the two teams that did win had expected to win since there wasn't a whole lot of celebration. The plan after that would be to shoot 2A golf, hopefully quickly, then heading out to 1A golf since we would most likely have two team state champions and two individual champs.

By the time I got to Roy Kizer Golf Course (which by the way may be the ugliest golf course on the planet) where the 2A tournament was being played I had to rush to the furthest part of the course. Luckily, Jim Ned golfer Ben Avery wears a very distinct hat and I was able to spot him from half way across the golf course. I hate having to rush, I usually end up with mediocre shots from that since I'm just trying to get quick photos and move on. I followed him two holes and was lucky enough to get a ride to the other side of the course. I grabbed a few shots of the girls on the last three holes as I was pretty much walking off the course and raced across town to the other golf course.

Here's where the problems come in. I look out on the course where the boys were supposed to be coming in and it was empty. SH!T! I quickly get to the girls green, there is Baird golfer Alex Neal putting. Then a crowd of Baird fans cheering. Damn, I missed her too. I knew I needed to get SOMETHING, so I go into semi-panic mode. I follow the Baird girls around. Luckily the scores haven't been posted yet. I pretty much trained my camera on the five Lady Bears golfers. I wasn't sure if I'd get anything, but when I heard them start talking about playing their final round of high school golf ever I knew there would be emotion soon. And when the score was posted, despite what pretty much everyone was expecting, there were some surprised looks as well as genuine happy emotions. And, after the rather disappointing tennis celebrations, this worked out really well. And, as a bonus, when they did the medal ceremony I got a nice shot of the Robert Lee boys going to get there medals too. I still hate that I wasn't able to get to shoot some of the action in time, but was still glad to have gotten something.

Hell Week, Day 1...

One of our reporters came up with the name, at the start of the week every year I don't think too much of it. Heck, I usually look forward to it. This year though, I had already been in Austin since Thursday for another assignment. So, with having four days in Austin under my belt already it was both good and bad. The bad being the obvious, four days already away from home (plus the two days at the start of the week in Lubbock). The good, however, was I didn't have to get up at 3:30am and make a four hour drive before even starting to work. So at least I had that going for me.

I pretty much mapped out how I would go about shooting, starting with the Class A golf, since we have the largest number of participants, it also made it so I could hit the next course on the way to tennis, which was basically on the other side of city in Lakeway, more than 30 miles from golf. The only saving grace about that was Lakeway is NEVER on time. The second round matches are always scheduled to start around 2pm, and in the years I have been covering the state tennis tournament there "only" being 2-3 hours late is the norm and has come to be expected, not to mention the people running the place are a bunch of pretentious snobs who would you the tournament just not be there in the first place. At least that's they way they make you feel while you're there... unwelcome. OK, Lakeway rant over. At least knowing this I was able to use it to my advantage and was able to spend plenty of time at golf, shooting the whole round there, and still make it out to shoot all of the second round tennis matches.