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.

Regional Track, Day 1...

I covered the Region I-3A and 5A track meets in Lubbock for the last couple of years now. It's a lot different from the state track meet in a lot of different ways. The biggest is there are both prelims and finals races over two days, at state, it's just finals. So, the first days is pretty nuts and bolts. There isn't a whole lot of emotions, mostly because even if you win your prelim race you still have to come back tomorrow and race again to make it to state. It often is time spent trying to figure out ways to make nice photos and stay creative. The one nice thing that I did have added over the last few track meets I shot, were field events. So, that was a nice change.

Another difference from past years is both the 3A and 5A meets were being combined instead of afternoon and evening sessions. This made things a lot easier for the deadlines since by the late session I was usually trying to edit from the earlier session and the late session both at the same time and send photos all at once. It made for a late night followed by an early morning. This time, though, I was finished and had everything sent by 9pm. In years past the late session was just getting finished at that time and made it for only a 12 hour day instead of 16. That helped a lot the next day.

Best of the Best...

When the time came this year to decide who was going to be on our All-Big Country Super Team, I knew this was going to be tough. Our area was just loaded with talent this year, especially on offense. In the past we've had some really good players, but there was always a couple that just rise to the top and had stand out years making the choices pretty simple. This year, however, there was no way around leaving out some really good players just based on how many great players we had. It made for a really fun year to cover. Having four teams win state titles, however, at this point, it became really hard. In the end the votes were tallied and the group we had were some really great players, then I had to get them into the studio for portraits. That was the fun part. I decided to go with colored backgrounds in the teams' corresponding colors.

First of the State Champs...

Stephenville High School had been a football power in Class 4A since before I moved here. They won four state titles while being coached by now Baylor head coach Art Briles. And the last few years they had been knocked out of the playoffs by the eventual state champs always in a close game. So, this year when they dropped down to Class 3A they were quickly thrust into the state championship conversations. After dropping their first game they had been on a tear. And especially through the playoffs the Yellow Jackets' offense was clicking on all cylinders.

The El Campo team they were playing was the typical pound the ball up the gut type of team that could give Stephenville's defense fits if it got rolling. But, the offense came out quick and set the tempo and Stephenville stacked the box to stop the run and jumped out to a quick lead. El Campo did come back and add a couple scores to get the game close again and went into the half with Stephenville up 35-21.

In the second half Stephenville proved without a doubt who the better team was. El Campo held there own for part of the third quarter, but towards the end of the quarter, the Yellow Jackets were pulling away with it and blew things wide open in the fourth quarter to win the game 70-35. The 70 points scored was also a record for most points scored in an 11-man state championship game. It was the school's 5th state title and the first in 13 years.

Clash of the Titans...

The matchup between Stephenville and Wylie in the Class 3A Division I state quarterfinals was something that many in the area had circled on the calender since the regular season was winding up. This is one of the best teams that Wylie has had in a while and Stephenville was dropping down from being a great 4A program. Wylie was ranked the #2 team in the state and Stephenville #3.

The first half of the game was what everyone expected. Stephenville's high octane offense put up points quick and had no trouble moving the ball up and down the field on Wylie's stout defense. The Wylie offense did a good job of moving the ball well too, mostly on the ground but also with some nice passing.

The second half of the game, though, was a different story. For the first part of the third quarter Wylie was still in the game, but by hr end of the quarter Stephenville was hitting on all cylinders and making plays on both sides of the ball and Wylie just couldn't keep up. The hole got too deep and the Stephenville offense never let up. I've said it before, this is probably the best Wylie defense I've even seen and the juggernaut of an offense that Stephenville put out there wasn't even phased by it. The final score was 59-28, Stephenville scored on every possession except the one turnover they had in the first half and when they ran out the clock at the end of the game, they looked really impressive.