Friday, Jan. 27 - A long night at the office is about to start. There are nine calls, no Rick and I get to manage the entire ship on my own (with two correspondents’ stories coming in).
This is the state of the desk before the calls come in:
My desk on Friday prior to the start of a long night of calls.
Thursday, Jan. 26 - The end of the swimming season is about to start. It is a time when you have to focus on the swimmers who are heading to the postseason meets and try and motivate and improve the rest of the squad for the future. The sub-district meet next Wednesday will be the first postseason meet and the last one for a large group of the boys.
This isn’t the time to ponder what life has been like in my first season as an assistant coach, but I will say this — I want to do this again. I now understand how some coaches find it tough to give up coaching their teams/sports. But post mortems later on that.
Most of this day was practice, prep and some desk work at night. Another long night, but without the stress. You don’t get too many of those in the winter.
Wednesday, Jan. 25 - A double dual meet between Aberdeen, North Thurston and Mark Morris dominated the day. I got some decent sleep after getting home at 2:30 a.m. from the Tuesday night shift, but not nearly enough to keep my from looking like I need another couple of hours of sleep.
The Bobcats split the duals, losing to North Thurston and beating Mark Morris. Damn good swims from everyone, especially seeing some of North Thurston’s studs up close. Those guys can fly and would have given some of the fastest swimmers on my high school and college teams a real challenge, especially in the sprints.
Several of the first-year swimmers made their district time marks to qualify for the meet. That was cool to see. Some of those guys were struggling to make 25 yards in the first days of practice. Now they are district qualifiers. They deserve the recognition and they’ll get a chance to enjoy the weekend experience.
Tuesday, Jan. 24 - In this time of economic instability, high schools have found ways to trim their expenses and still give students their full experience. But in this case, bullshit.
The new trend over the past couple of seasons has been co-ed doubleheaders in basketball and traveling double dual meets in wrestling in the winter. I won’t get the pleasure of covering a double dual meet, but the basketball twin bills are tough to get through mentally.
On this day, I found myself sitting courtside for the Montesano at Hoquiam co-ed doubleheader at Hoquiam Square Garden (yes, that’s the real name of Hoquiam’s gym). The girls game was first, at 5:45 p.m. After you shove down your dinner or a snack, you get two struggling offenses trying to outduel each other. This game was the exception to the rule. Montesano produced its biggest scoring night of the season to edge Hoquiam.
It isn’t a problem to cover one basketball game. The problem is keeping your focus on the second game. The boys game was entertaining enough, plenty of offense and a good narrative. However, mentally, I was drifting off to “la la” land. By the end of the third quarter, I was on auto-pilot. There are a few tricks you can do to keep yourself in the moment, but this format tests you and it is easy to make mistakes. (Not what you would call a drastic event or even a mild one, but just a bit of reality. In the grand scheme of things, I get paid to watch sports. Not a complaint should be given…)
A view from the press table looking east at Hoquiam Square Garden on Tuesday night
