Sports

XC Invitational + Soccer

Posted by Ivy

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.

Hell Week

Posted by Ivy

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.

Little League 101

Posted by Ivy

I did a piece on the Little League All-Star teams this past weekend (I had to file the story from the Falmouth Public Library and the photos from Wickford, RI, which made things, um, interesting)…nothing too in-depth, but it did take a lot of running around and pestering phone calls to make sure all four teams (9, 10, 11, and 12-year-olds) were represented in the article.

The whole process was made infinity times easier by the fact that I now have a CAR! I’m going to blog about this specifically sometime soon, as it truly warrants more attention. I can’t believe I have a car. It’s fantastic.

Anyway. These are all from practices; since the teams are by nature travel squads, all of their games are tournaments on the mainland, and I couldn’t get to any of them (darn it!) to take photos of actual competition…

Nothing like getting up to take a 7:45 boat off-Island for a tournament…

Sometimes I miss the days of non-Facebook birthday party invitations

Cape League IS Baseball

Posted by Ivy

I have a Chatham A’s shirt with that slogan on the back. I’d say it’s pretty accurate- the Cape Cod Baseball League is a summer collegiate league, and it tends to attract some of the best talent in the country. About a third of the guys I saw play last Thursday had previously been in Omaha for the College World Series.

When they renovated the high school ballfield here six years ago, they made sure it was built to CCBL specifications, so that Cape League games could eventually be hosted on the Vineyard. For the past three years, they’ve recruited two teams to come over and play a day game (most games are at night). This year it was Falmouth and Hyannis (both of which are teams that are close to ferry ports. Makes the trip a little easier).

I saw the sign for the Cape League game when it was first posted a month ago at the high school and jumped all over that assignment when it came up at the news meeting. I wrote the article for it, too (all of the articles I write are in the subscriber-only area of the Gazette, so I can’t link to them), but was way more excited about getting to play with my other new lens, a 70-200 f/4.

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The best part about Cape games, especially if you’re a little kid, is the accessibility to the players. In college parks, the players are in their dugouts the whole time, which are separated from the fans. In the CCBL, everything happens at recreational ballparks, so all that’s between the players and the fans is a chain-link fence. And because the league has such a reputation for producing future MLBers (David Aardsman, Lance Berkman, Jason Varitek, David DeJesus, Casey Blake, Ben Sheets, Jeff Kent, Tim Lincecum, Nick Swisher, Barry Zito, Ryan Theriot, to name a few), kids spend a lot of time getting autographs. You never know when you might end up with something signed by the next Nomar Garciaparra.

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Streetball Saturday (belated post)

Posted by Ivy

I got my 20mm lens last Friday (finally), which happened to be just in time for me to cover the Vineyard Streetball Classic the next afternoon. I really can’t imagine trying to do the assignment without the wide-angle…I was sitting right behind the hoop and even then I wished I had a 14mm or something, because I kept cutting off hands and feet when kids jumped in and out of the frame.

The kids, it should be noted, played from 10:30am to 3:30pm. The founders of the tournament (3-on-3 half-court ball) started it to promote physical activity, and I’d definitely say they were successful in that respect.

I got insanely sunburned that day, because I had only planned to go for an hour and a half or so, but heard whisperings that Ray Allen might make an appearance later on. And so, because I am a good journalist, I stuck around for the whole thing (not bothering to put more sunscreen on…), but Mr. Allen never showed (he was busy golfing elsewhere. Oh well. At least I’ll have a wicked tan for a while.
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This light post is ruining my potentially artsy picture.

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World Cup, parte dois

Posted by Ivy

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…
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(MU photo-js, doesn’t the guy in the middle look like Joel? Unreal.)

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Future pubbers.

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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.

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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.

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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.”

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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.

20100628_1234Meadow 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.

World Cup!

Posted by Ivy

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.

More Tennis

Posted by Ivy

Turns out I did get to go back and shoot the MV boys in their second MIAA match against Ashland. I wasn’t as happy with these shots as from the first go-around (of course); I had much better, tighter action shots from the Friday match. Those weren’t the ones that ran in the paper (actually, these weren’t, either), but what can you do?

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In completely insane news, I had so many major assignments last weekend that when the Tuesday paper came out, two of the articles and nineteen of the photos were under my byline. It feels so ridiculous just writing that.

Extracurriculars

Posted by Ivy

I’m moving my blog over to the wordpress.org domain! That means I can post SoundSlides files! (Apologies to iPad users out there…)

To kick things off, here are some color photos from the ballet spread that ran in Friday’s paper (and some that didn’t).

After I shot the first ballet rehearsal (the Peter Pan one), I was heading to the bus stop when I saw a lacrosse game going on at one of the high school fields. I’ve never shot lacrosse before, so I decided to try making some photos just for fun. It’s definitely one of the harder sports I’ve photographed (that might be because I don’t have a clue as to what the rules are—I was so confused when play moved to BEHIND the net), and I’m glad I tried it out before I ever have to do it as an actual assignment.

On Friday, I went to photograph a tennis match; the high school boys’ team had made it into the playoff bracket for the MIAA. They completely smoked their Cohasset High opponents and are moving on to the next round. Tennis was far easier to shoot than lacrosse, but, again, I haven’t shot this particular sport very much (I think the last time was junior year of college), and I hope that I get to go to the second round match so I can practice some more.

Softball + Rainout

Posted by Ivy

I covered a softball game for the Missourian this afternoon, but the game was rained out and rescheduled after 3 and a half innings. The reporter didn’t write up a story, and the sports desk had left early, so none of the photos were published. Oh well. I had fun shooting anyway!