Freelance Writing – Regular Guy

Are You Ready for Some Football?

brian — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 17:34:41 +0000

I love this time of year. Not just because the weather usually starts to cool off, and I can start planning my fall television viewing schedule. I love this time of year because it’s football season.

Now this isn’t the kind of mania which results in viewing and dissection of NFL pre-season games or arguments over who should be ranked where in the college football polls. I find both of those exercises pointless.

That doesn’t mean I’m not excited to root for the Ravens or Penn State. I plan on wasting a lot of Saturday and Sunday afternoons following both teams, but I have something else in store which excites me even more.

I’m covering high school football again for The York Daily Record/Sunday News. This might not sound like earth-shattering news or have some great effect on most people, but it’s something which really gets me jazzed. I’m not afraid to say I love high school football.

Sure, the money I make covering games helps, but I’m not running out to cover a bunch of other sports each week just for the money. I do this in my spare time so my interest in the sport makes a tremendous difference.

Football gets a nod because it’s a pretty regimented activity. The games happen at pretty much the same time every week (with the exception of a few schools who play Saturdays). I have a system which works well for me as far as keeping the statistics I need. To top it all off, I have run into few, if any, coaches in York and Adams county who make me second-guess my decision to give up my Friday nights to cover games, and I like the people at the paper I freelance for.

Maybe all of this works because I didn’t have a “Friday Night Lights” experience in high school. I went to an all-boys Jesuit school which played its games on Friday or Saturday afternoons. There was some social element, but nothing like Friday nights in Pennsylvania.

I can’t help feeding off the energy at most games. I don’t necessarily root for or against anyone, but I find myself really invested in hoping that everyone just does the best they can. If that happens, there’s nothing like talking to a teenager who has just done something spectacular in front of a big crowd.

That’s why I’ll give up pretty much all my Friday nights this fall (and a few Saturdays). Plus I get to go into a newsroom (the place in this world where I feel most comfortable) and feel that energy, but that attraction is a different topic for a different day.

New Sport Has a Kick

brian — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 14:59:17 +0000

I didn’t have any plans a couple of Sundays ago. We planned on having some friends over the Saturday before to grill and hang out, so I assumed I would spend the next day napping and watching sports.

Then I got a fateful phone call.

Well, it wasn’t fateful, but it was intriguing. The fine folks over at the York Daily Record wanted me to come out and cover an event for the paper.

Sure, I said. A little freelance money never hurt anyone. Plus, I could take part in a little bit of history.

They wanted me to cover the state’s first legal mixed martial arts event. I was going to get paid to see guys beat the snot out of each other. I love this country.

Even though some of my wrestling brethren have moved into MMA territory, I have never really gotten into the sport. I appreciate the success it has had, but just never cleared time to watch.

I would always check to see how the wrestlers did when I read a story because I can certainly see why wrestlers take on the MMA challenge. When wrestlers do well, I feel a little bit of pride as if I had something to do with their success.

Most of us have this kind of kinship, and the guys going into MMA are fulfilling some fantasies us older guys have harbored for years. Like one of the fighters with a wrestling background told me, he could not believe he didn’t have to worry about bringing his opponent to the mat safely when he got the guy up in the air.

There is a flip side, however. I asked one of the other guys, didn’t we start wrestling so we didn’t have to worry about getting punched and kicked? He laughed as if that he had ruminated over that thought more than a few times.

Wrestling for six minutes is tough enough, adding kicks and punches – with padded gloves – into the mix doesn’t make it any easier. I admire the work put in by the guys going at it last Sunday.

I didn’t need long to get a little hooked on the sport. And, yes, it is a sport. Don’t let anyone hang onto John McCain’s characterization of MMA as “human cockfighting” any longer.

In the long run, what took place resembled backyard brawls which every kid has with his brothers and friends more than any kind of blood sport. In fact, the list of what you cannot do is much longer than the list of what you can do. I wish my four older brothers had that kind of list when I was growing up.

Maybe that is what is fueling this MMA excitement locally and across the country. Maybe all the really successful guys grew up with big brothers like I did, and this is their revenge.

If that’s the case, I wish the sport had taken off when I was in good enough shape to take advantage of things. Because no matter how much I feared getting punched, I could enjoy the opportunity to pay someone back for all my years as the little brother without the fear of getting into trouble.

The next event in York is in July. Maybe I should start training now.

No Holds Barred

brian — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 14:59:17 +0000

Well, not really, but I got a chance to see the first-ever legal mixed martial arts event in Pennsylvania Sunday. I have written that phrase a bunch of times and never thought to ask anyone if there were plenty of illegal MMA events before the regulations went into effect.

Either way, I had fun and will opine on that in this coming Sunday’s column. Speaking of columns, I have done a bad job posting them lately and will try to catch up soon. We’ll see how well I do at keeping that promise.

So you can go check out the story I wrote for the event Sunday. It ran on A-1 of the York Daily Record.

Friday Night Writes

brian — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 13:12:01 +0000

I can think of a lot of fun ways to spend a Friday night. One thing on my list, however, probably wouldn’t interest most other people.

I love covering a high school football game for the newspaper.

For several years, I covered games because I had to. I worked as a sports writer at The Evening Sun in Hanover, Pa., where I now live. Since I got out of the newspaper biz, however, I have continued to freelance on occasion to pick up some extra cash and to just enjoy the good fun of high school football.

Because I have lived in this area for 16 years now, I know most of the coaches, reporters from other papers and some of the people who work in the press boxes so it’s not always like work. Then there is just the fun of watching the kids who come to the games as well as the simple competition of high school athletes. I also have a really simple system of doing stats that makes it pretty easy to get all that busy work done without much trouble.

Last night, I covered a game for the York Daily Record, but The Evening Sun also ran my story (they are both owned by the same company). I thought I had a really interesting story on my hands until the game turned into a blowout in the fourth quarter. Still, the little nuggets that come up in even the most lopsided game make the work worthwhile.