Yay, Sport is Finally Starting Up

photoflyer · Apr 9, 2021

ac12 said:
Right now, even though the government has said vaccinations are open down to 16 years, the availability is the problem.
Parents are not vaccinated, cuz until recently the cut off was 65. And now some places are cutting off at 50, due to limited supply of vaccines. And most parents are younger than 50. It's goina be a long haul, that hopefully won't have any BIG bumps.

Here in Arlington, a population of 220,000, not a single person under 39 has died of Covid. The risk is real but not for the kids and not even for most of their parents. The risk is for the older adults with whom they come in contact. I was on a conference call with the head football coach of my college alma mater and he was proud of what they had done to "protect the kids." I almost jumped in and said I wasn't worried about the kids, I was worried about him. It is very tricky. The older 2nd degree contacts are at most risk.

ac12 · Apr 9, 2021

photoflyer said:
ac12 said:

Right now, even though the government has said vaccinations are open down to 16 years, the availability is the problem.
Parents are not vaccinated, cuz until recently the cut off was 65. And now some places are cutting off at 50, due to limited supply of vaccines. And most parents are younger than 50. It's goina be a long haul, that hopefully won't have any BIG bumps.

Click to expand...

Here in Arlington, a population of 220,000, not a single person under 39 has died of Covid. The risk is real but not for the kids and not even for most of their parents. The risk is for the older adults with whom they come in contact. I was on a conference call with the head football coach of my college alma mater and he was proud of what they had done to "protect the kids." I almost jumped in and said I wasn't worried about the kids, I was worried about him. It is very tricky. The older 2nd degree contacts are at most risk.

Agree, the kids are likely to be the carriers, spread to other kids, then it goes home to the parents/grandparents.
At the same time, we don't know what the new variants will do. If it will affect the young more than the older variants.

ac12 · Apr 20, 2021

We finished our football season.
Only THREE games for the varsity team. And of that, only ONE at home.

Sigh. Such is this year. At least they had a season.
Some sport teams at our school and other schools were not even formed.

It is nearing the end of April, with less than a month and a half left in the school year, and the school districts have yet to approve playing gym sports (basketball and volleyball). There is some discussion if those sports, if they start, will continue past the end of the school year.

ac12 · Apr 28, 2021

The last football game of the season/year was an away game.
Once the sun went down, the field lighting stunk.
The field lighting was 1 to 1-1/2 stops LESS that at our home field

My exposure was ISO 12800, 1/500 sec, f/4 (wide open). And it was still underexposed. I had to do PP on a lot of the pics. I probably should have been down at 1/250 sec.

If there is a next time, I will bring the school's 70-200/2.8 instead of my f/4 lens.

Now that I know the lighting there, it has been recorded in my notes, so we don't forget.

This raised the question of what is the field lighting like at some of the other schools?

ac12 · May 15, 2021

When it rains, it pours.

With the compressed 2nd season, there are 29 different sports, with many games, packed close together.
I've shot up to four games in a single day, and usually five-days in a row. Which leaves little time for editing.
I have a back-up of 9 games to edit. And that is only the ones that I have to edit, to just get ONE game per sport.

The other day, the old body finally broke down from the pace of shooting. In the middle of shooting the 3rd game of the day, my back HURT. I decided that was enough, and packed up and went home to rest my back. The boys varsity volleyball game will have to wait for another day.

ac12 · Jun 14, 2021

Season is DONE :encouragement:

I got the senior games and presentations done.
I am now going back to edit and upload some of the games that I did not have time to edit, during the season.

Considering the situation, things generally went well this year.
Crazy busy, but no major issues, till near the end.

Except for soccer. A parent sued the league south of us, for some reason related to the playoffs. I understand that our league did not want to be sued either. So, the soccer season was IMMEDIATELY CANCELLED. The coach had less than 24 hours notice before the scheduled game. Something like this spreads FAST, and some of the kids knew about it before the coach did. On top of the all the COVID issues, what a rotten way to end their senior year.
So everyone suffered because that parent was "upset." It was all about them, no one else matters.

ronlane · Jun 14, 2021

What was the parent sueing about?

ac12 · Jun 14, 2021

ronlane said:
What was the parent sueing about?

Caution, this is word of mouth, I have not seen anything in print. And because this was started by a law suit, I doubt that I will ever see anything in print. And you know what happens to facts when it is repeated by mouth from person to person, it changes.
The coach told me that he was getting mixed and conflicting messages, so he did not know the facts.

Without knowing the facts, and pieced together from the pieces that I was told.

It had something to do with the soccer playoffs in another league.
The team that the parent's child was in, did not make it into the playoffs.
How the team did not make the playoff, no idea. But it seems the parent sued because they felt the team that their child was on, did not have a fair chance to get into the playoffs.
But rather than cancelling just the playoffs, the league cancelled everything, the in-process season and the playoff, and just shut down the sport.
Out of fear of getting sued for the same reason, our league did similar, cancelled everything immediately, and shut down the sport.

Most everything this year was jerry rigged to work around the covid reduced and compressed sport schedule.
- Some sports did not have a playoff.
- I heard that one of the issues for some sports was, how to rank the teams for playoff, when they only played FOUR games TOTAL, and not played half the teams in the league. Our Varsity Football only played FOUR games, no pre-season, no post-season.