A new season on the horizon
We are nearing the middle of August and for me, that means that things are starting to kick into high gear. High school sports are starting back up and with that comes the previews for the upcoming season. There are plenty of returning faces to recognize out there on the court, field or course, but also tons of new ones that will be getting their first shot at varsity or JV squads.
Speaking with all of the coaches, one can tell that it’s an exciting time for both the players and the coaching staff. Especially with it being the start of the school year, there is certainly a sense of starting anew, an energy of a fresh start where all possibilities are still on the table. Sometimes that energy can kind of start to slip in the doldrums of winter, so it is easy for me to feed into that excitement myself.
Last year was my first full year covering all three sports seasons and I feel that I learned a lot over that time. Whether it was where the best places to take pictures are for each sport or how to formulate the structure for a story, there were constantly new things to tackle, experiment with, and better understand. This job is very much a task of constant improvement, of finding new and better ways to be more efficient or to take a different creative angle on whatever it is that I’m covering. With that first year under my belt, hopefully I can take those lessons and apply them to this upcoming year’s coverage.
Being constantly around all of these sporting events over the past year tended to make me feel nostalgic for my own time playing for the Hornets. Especially after years away from the high school sports scene and the area in general, being dropped back in the deep end made those thoughts of years past all too prevalent. While it was perhaps strange to be back in such an environment, hashing over past sports triumphs or failures, was something that I tried to push aside. Nor will I bore anyone here with the regaling of such things, but they bear mention because it was, despite my attempts to do otherwise, impossible not to miss the camaraderie.
One aspect that I found interesting to consider is the nostalgia I felt for the mere thrill of competition. I’ll admit, I am a fairly competitive person. This too is something that I’ve had to tone down a touch, but there is something about testing one’s mettle against the odds, pushing oneself to the limits and hopefully coming out on top that is baked in. It’s interesting, when taking a step back, to see how I’ve had to take that competitiveness and instead, apply it to other things when playing organized sports no longer fit neatly into my college schedule. Whether it was pick-up basketball, online competitive games, or putting it on the professional sports teams I cheered for, there were alternatives that never quite scratched the itch the same way. There is something different about that feeling of stepping onto the field or court with your teammates that is difficult to replicate. It’s an experience all to its own, in a way, and I think leaving it at that is best. Attempting to recreate any sort of feeling does both a disservice to both the experience you are trying to copy, as well as what you are currently doing to try and reach that exact same thing. My excitement for the new season is certainly different now than it was ten years ago, but that’s probably a good thing.
Best of luck to players, coaches and everyone else involved in making these games possible!
A C ertain Point of V iew
