Land of Confusion

Cutter's Log - Stardate 0102.52.11
Current Song - Land of Confusion (Genesis)

A lot of people liked the fact that I had a great memory when I was younger.

I guess you can figure out the theme here.

This is one of those weeks when childhood friends come back to town from wherever they are. Those I haven't seen in months, and even years. I'd see them every day at school or every week elsewhere. Then we graduated high school and took the first train out of town following the graduation ceremony. I wouldn't see them for years.

In the five years since I graduated high school, a lot of things can change among us. Physically we get a little heavier, especially those women that have kids at the moment.

I saw many people I haven't seen in a while tonight at the gas station. My best friend from grade school, Jared, stopped by. I recognized him in an instant. Another friend, Corey, also stopped in. It went on for a while, up until about midnight.

There was this girl that came in and adressed me by name. Obviously she knew me, but I couldn't quite figure out who she was. I'm going through my database of friends inside my brain, and I couldn't come up with a match. Then she asked how Mike, Chris and Dan were doing.

I kind of figured out she was probably one of my friends from Sterling, considering that nearly all of my friends from Rock Falls don't know the names of my three brothers. Since she knew the names of my brothers, I figured it had to be someone near my graduating class that had brothers and sisters the same age as my brothers.

So who would know my three brothers? It took me a while and I thought of only one option, given the description of this girl. It just didn't seem like her.

Okay, so I thought of cousins from both sides of my family. Nope.

Then I thought of kids on my old block in Rock Falls, as well as my old block in Sterling. Rock Falls didn't turn up any matches. Then back to Sterling, where I lived from age 2 to age 7. There was only one possible person. Then I'm going, how would she remember Dan or Chris?

I gave up. I didn't ask her who she was, because I would feel stupid if it were someone obvious. Then there goes a rumor that I have alzheimers, and so on and so on ...

I've had these kinds of brain farts a few times at the gas stations. Whenever I do, it seems to be someone from Sterling. I, for some reason, remember my Rock Falls friends better than I do my Sterling friends.

At least I have some criteria to go by when trying to figure out who someone is without asking their name.

I think why this is happening is because I don't spend a lot of time around those that I have been around with back then anymore. A bunch of high school sports stuff pushes this kind of memory back deeper and deeper.

I still think back to my class reunion where someone told me that I don't get out a lot because I'm too busy. Then I try to eliminate some of this busyness. Can't do it. On the days I'm not working, I'm covering something. I dedicate the day to covering the event, and I have stats and story angles and such in continual thought for hours before the game.

Not trying to put an autistic angle to things, but it seems we all gather around a different group of people after we become disconnected from the long association that is K-12 schooling. It's taken my a few years to find my kind of circle, but I'd like to say that I have a lot of good sportswriting friends out there and high school sports friends (even if they don't consider me a "friend" but rather an acquaintence). Outside of sportswriting, I have a few friends from the gas station.

Those friends at the gas station I see more often than I do my sportswriting friends. Of the people I know outside of work customers, family, co-workers and these work friends, I see the area's sportswriters more often than I do friends from school. I think I've covered games with more than 50 sportswriters in the area I cover. Some I see at least 10 times a year, others less.

So there's this group of people that do the same things I do, and enjoy doing it. I remember moving back to Sterling after a few years in Rock Falls, and how hard it was to make friends. I feel the same way now with these people. It's extremely difficult for me to make friends, given my autistic nature. But I'm not going to let that restrain me.

Conversation pieces are abundant: from the high school sports scene, doing our jobs, and the inner workings of the game we're covering. I guess from there it expands outward?

I've always wondered how people I know take the fact that I go see high school sports events at someplace where I don't even know one person. If anything, the only person I know is likely the sportswriter or coach.

Sideline vs. Press Box

Cutter's Log - Stardate 0102.81.11
Current Song - We Almost Lost Detroit (Marquis Porter)

Today, something was revisited to make me go back and find what was written earlier in a Publisher's Desk blog:

"Speaking of deterring my way of covering things, I'm considered a "sideline reporter" for football games, as opposed to reporting from a press box. A couple of times I have been informed of a new rule regarding media restrictions at football games at the 20-yard lines. For years, sideline reporters like myself can intermix with the bench and watch what goes on near the 50-yard line. What if something important happens at midfield? From our vantage point at the 20-yard line, not much is seen. How are we supposed to accurately tell what happened? Go to the press box? There's no room in most press boxes for that one extra reporter. And why was this rule in place, anyway? As long as we do our job properly, don't interfere with us, please."

Is there not enough "box" for the "press?" Seems to be this way.

In the past few years there has been a growth in the number of "press" in Illinois high school sports. The newspapers all point to me and blame me for that :)

It's not as if my husky body takes up space in a press box, but rather they cringe at the sight of a start-up publication. Likely this particular start-up publication is there for a purpose: to be better than the newspapers. Not NISB. At least not since the doctrine that I layed out in this past NISB State of the Site Address. We're here to supplement the newspapers, and work together with them.

Along with writing journalists (this meaning someone like me and a newspaper writer), there are radio journalists and even television crews. There needs to be room for them, too.

Plus when it comes to playoffs, a newspaper will send an extra reporter or two, or three, or even four to write a sidebar or two, or three, or four.

There's only so much room in a press box, and I understand this. I'm a young person, so I can run around a sideline.

Here's where the problem lies:

Certain schools are trying to limit the use of sideline space for reporters. One particular school has a rule where you can't go between the "twenties" on the sideline. This same school is covered by at least five different newspapers, two radio stations and a television crew. That's just the home media. That's not including the box crew, visiting media and the coordinator coaches. This partiular box is "spacious" according to them.

When you limit my sideline space, I'm not going to be happy.

Could we perhaps run from 20 to 20 when the ball goes into the other team's territory (crossing the 50)? If we can't even do that, we've got a problem. Our vantage point after about 20 yards or so becomes rocky. If we are supposed to write about key runs using detail, and perhaps use the paint-a-picture lede, it is somewhat distrupted by the fact that we aren't closer to the action.

I've been roaming football sidelines for only nine years, but I think I've been to enough high school football fields to say this: I've never had a problem with coaches while trying to write about something, shoot something or film something. The closest I've come from being told something by a coach was in a big game for this particular team, and the coach was very nervous because he kept yelling at everyone to go back five feet from him. Couldn't blame him, it was an important divisional game.

Nowhere in the new IHSA State Series Press Box Priority List does it state the sideline limitation, so it's a school-based rule. I hope no more schools catch up to this. I'm sure the schools look forward to great and accurate coverage by their newspaper or website. If it's their sideline enforcement that makes us write shotty articles, don't come running to us. "We USED to be able to do this, and not any more."

Hall of Fame

Cutter's Log - Stardate 0102.61.11
Current Song - Something About You (Level 42)

I found out tonight that the Winter 2011 Induction for the SHS Athletic Hall of Fame will be on January 28. I am a member of the 2001-02 girls basketball team as a manager.

Looking forward to the event.