I’m about ten posts behind on blogging, and am hoping to catch up this weekend (now that I have Internet in my apartment!), but in the meantime, here are a couple of photos from the past couple days of high school sports:
Each of them thought the other had won after they crossed the finish line.
This one isn’t anything special, but I liked it anyway. I love when players run right towards the camera:
The football and soccer teams at my old high school played like polar opposites this weekend…football stomped all over NMH 54-7, but the boys’ soccer team lost 5-0 (I didn’t make it to the girls’ match. I’m hoping they fell on the stomping side of the spectrum).
I love how much closer you can get to the action at high school games. It makes up for only having a 70-200 to work with (regardless, most of these have been cropped).
In addition to my regular photo and semi-regular photoreporting duties, I’m now the official High School Sports Reporter. At least until the end of the month, after which…I really don’t know what’s happening. I’ll keep you posted!
This weekend there was an invitational cross country meet and a girls’ soccer game. I haven’t shot cross country (or, “How many different ways can you shoot people running?”) since, well, high school, and soccer has never been my thing, so I was happy to have the chance to get more chances to shoot the sports.
I’m also a fan of working the high school beat because my cousin is a sophomore at the school and knows EVERYBODY (plus, she was on the cross country team last year). Not hard to do when you’ve grown up with everybody on this tiny island, but man, does it make figuring out names that much easier. Thanks, Texe!
Teammates cheer on Michael Osborn as he wins the JV race.
Kassidy Bettencourt outpaces her opponent to the finish line.
Thorpe Karabees nears the end of the JV race. (P.S. What is the finger thing he’s doing? Is that a runner thing?)
Emily Cimeno and Shelby Ferry congratulate Sam Oslyn on his medal.
Max Miner crosses the finish line in the boys varsity race.
I like this one the best, since it also sums up the game (in which the Vineyard defense was pushed to the brink by the North Plymoth power offense) nicely.
I don’t know how high schoolers do it.
Last fall I did a project for Picture Story about the Hickman High band, which practices four times a week at 6:30 in the morning. So I had to get up at unseemly hours just to get myself up to the school (this was before I had a car, so I had to walk). But I was only doing that for a week, not a whole football season. I don’t think I have that kind of motivation.
Of course, then, I was assigned to do a story about Hell Week at MVRHS- which is when the athletes do their preseason training. The field hockey team starts practice–yes, starts–at 5:45 in the morning. They don’t stop until past 8:15. The soccer teams are a little more sane; they start at 6:30. But still!
I admit I gave up completely on the 5:45 thing (reason #2353 why I don’t play field hockey). That was when I headed out the door to go up to the practice. (Besides, the light’s terrible at 5:45…right? right?).
This was taken WITH the lens hood on. Yep.
Still working on the World Cup feature. I went to the England/Germany game at ten in the morning on Sunday (after getting up a 7:30 to haul over to West Tisbury for photo shoot with a farmer. Blah).
There were quite a few England fans in the restaurant, but despite some promising play in the first half, the game did not go the way they wanted it to…
(MU photo-js, doesn’t the guy in the middle look like Joel? Unreal.)
Future pubbers.
Bartender Garry Metters fills in the World Cup bracket hanging on the wall of the Coop de Ville. “You have no idea how much it hurt to do that,” said Metters, who is from England.
I had two shoots worth of losing teams’ fans, which was annoying. But fortunately, there was a still a Brazil match to go watch.
I mentioned before that there’s a huge Brazilian population on Martha’s Vineyard (before that it was a large Portuguese population who came here for the whaling). It was a very different experience watching them watch the game–unlike US fans, or even England fans, they just EXPECT that Brazil will win. It’s a given. The tension that was building in the US game and the sad resignation that showed up during the England match weren’t there at all. I’ve never really seen any fans with that kind of wholly confident outlook towards their team. That’s not to say the Brazilian fans were at all boring or subdued about showing support, though.
Vani Pessoni buries her face in her hands after watching Brazil miss a goal opportunity in a World Cup Round of 16 match against Chile. Pessoni was on call at the hospital where she works at the time of the match. “I’m a freak,” she says of her fandom. “I get way too into it.”
Luis Lopes (left) high-fives across the table after Brazil scores a second goal against Chile. The Brazilian team could be even better than it is, according to Lopes, but “they go for the big-name players” when making a roster, rather than pure talent.
Meadow Willoughby, 3, plugs her ears to block the roar of the crowd as mother Tatiane daSilva embraces her after watching Brazil score a third goal against Chile.
I love the World Cup. As is the case with most sports things, I didn’t start really paying attention until I was fourteen, at which point I became one of Those People who wakes up at 5 in the morning to watch games. When I was sixteen, I lived in Spain for two months and started paying more attention to international club soccer, and four years after that I lived in Barcelona for a semester. It’s very hard to live in Barcelona and NOT get swept up by football mania; FC Barcelona has been one of the best clubs in the world for the past several years, and the Catalans are quite proud of that.
Plus, the Americans have been doing well in their international matches lately (Spain? Confederations Cup?), which gives me even more cause to love El Mundial.
This is why I asked my editors at the paper if I do a short feature about soccer-watchers on the Vineyard; there are a lot of ex-pats here, as well as a sizable Brazilian population. Today I went to the Coop de Ville in O.B. to photograph the USA/Ghana game, and I’ll be going back there tomorrow for England/Germany (I’m mostly interested in that one for the ex-pat factor, and because Oak Bluffs liquor laws make it so alcohol can’t be served before noon…but the game starts at ten. Interesting twist!). Brazil plays on Monday, so I’ll work then, too, but probably not at the Coop.
Yes, shooting spectators is pretty much a gimme assignment, but I had a ton of fun regardless (plus, it helped me not completely stress out about the US team playing, which I tend to do when actually watching them). I don’t have everybody’s names, unfortunately, since there was a surprising ebb and flow of the crowd considering that soccer games don’t lend themselves well to leaving in the middle.
The lazy among blog viewers can just skip to #10.