basketball

MV at the Garden

Posted by Ivy

The varsity boys’ basketball team made it to the state semifinals for Division 3 this week, so they earned a trip to the TD Garden (home of the Celtics and Bruins) to play last year’s state champs, Danvers. Last Saturday, I went to the section finals at UMass Boston, where the Vineyard defeated perpetual rival Wareham to win the South Section. We decided to try live-tweeting that game, and it worked very well, so my editors decided we’d do it again for states.

I’m usually photographer and reporter for sports coverage, and while tweeting updates in between taking photos is wicked stressful, it was a huge help later when I went back to write everything up. Instant notes!

They played a great game, but the Vineyard lost 50-47, and Danvers is once again in the state finals. The story about the postseason is here.

I wish I could shoot at the Garden all the time; I loved the dark contrast of the massive ceiling, and that bright green floor.

 

Middle School Basketball: In the Land of Giants

Posted by Ivy

(I wish the high school gym had better lighting. Had to make these black and white because not even custom white balance was helping…)

I went to cover the middle school basketball championship games tonight. The girls’ matchup, between West Tisbury and Edgartown, was unintentionally quite funny, because half of the girls on each team had had their growth spurts…and the others hadn’t. Makes it easy to set up a defense if you have that kind of advantage to work with. It also made for this picture, which reminds me of one Vivian took at a PeeWee football game during Staff Photo:

Needless to say, Edgartown had the size advantage and thus the better defense, so they tromped West Tis. They also did a better job jazzing up their uniforms:

The boys’ game, however, was a different story. I suspect this had something to do with the more even height matchups, which made for a much more even game. Oak Bluffs, the team that didn’t even make a basket for the first five minutes of the game, rallied in the second quarter to win 31-26. Pretty exciting for middle school hoops; I mostly stopped taking photos in the second because I was trying to write down all of the back-and-forth manueverings.

I did get this shot in the second quarter, though, and it’s my favorite basketball photo I’ve ever taken (the layup didn’t go in):

West Tisbury’s coach is a woman, which I thought was very cool. She coached them to a 9-0 season before they lost this game.

Weird flash effects!

I’m very behind on blogging, and will try to get back up to speed this week…

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.
20100703_1411_edit
This light post is ruining my potentially artsy picture.

20100702_1442_edit

20100703_1336_edit

20100702_1512_edit

20100703_1350_edit