Dear dimwit on the phone

My favorite thread...

Not on the phone, but just kind of tired of people who think that because I cover high school sports and know all the coaches and a lot of the kids that this somehow means I know what every employee in the school district does.

Co-worker: "Apeman, do you know what Kelly Podunk does at the high school?"

Me: "Who's Kelly Podunk?"

Co-worker: "Well doesn't she work in the media center or have something to do with the yearbook?"

Me: "I don't know everyone at the high school."

Co-worker: blank stare. "Why not?"

Me: "Did you check the school website?"

Co-worker: blank stare.

 

Got an early candidate for the high school football quote of the year last night from a local coach:

"We could have won it, but we lost it. And the reason we lost it is because we didn’t win it."

For context, it came after his team blew a 14-0 lead against the defending state champions, and lost 17-14 on a touchdown with 30 seconds to go. Leading up to that, they had 100 yards in penalties (including an illegal block that wiped out a punt return TD that would have made it 21-0 in the second quarter), lost two fumbles, and botched a punt snap inside their 25 with a minute left that set up the game-winning drive, among other mistakes. So he was basically saying they screwed around, let a good team hang around instead of putting them away, and paid for it.
And I think it's a sure sign I've been doing this too long that I knew exactly what he meant when he said it and it made total sense.

 

Yogi Berra approves.

 

Tuesday, nearby small school beat in-town Catholic school in volleyball. Both teams are in our coverage area and in the same conference. We only received info from the Catholic school, and that came well after deadline, so we followed policy and put it in the briefs section. Fans from the nearby small school have since complained, saying we didn't put info in about their players because we favor the Catholic school (in the past, everyone on the sports staff has been accused of being graduates of the Catholic school, but none of us are) and that team lost.

 

I was waiting on the same match, Fossy, so I feel your pain. BTW, NR often posts their stats to Maxpreps before they email results in so that's one avenue you can try.

 

We had a guy come in the office yesterday and complain about Veteran's Day activities being held on a Sunday this year.

But Veteran's Day is on a Sunday. What day did he think activities were going to be held?

And we're still not sure what he expected us to do about it.

 

Been way too long since we had this thread updated.
Covered a girls high school basketball game yesterday between two in-town schools. Weird game. The teams shot 94 free throws, including 46 in the fourth quarter when Team B was trying to come back from 24 down. They played the last 10 seconds with four players on the floor, and Team A won by eight.
Anyway, Team A's coach got ejected in the first quarter after getting two bullshit technical fouls within 30 seconds of each other. His player got called for a foul, he said something like, "That wasn't over the back!" and got the first one. The ref came over and warned him and he calmly said, "All I said was that wasn't over the back," and got the second. He never got out of hand or even loud. It was silly, and one of several weird moments in this weird game.
Afterward, one of his assistants sees me at the scorer's table and says, very sweetly, "Now I know you're not going to mention my coach getting ejected. Please don't do that, we don't need to talk about that."
I told her there were 800 people in the gym who saw it. Not mentioning it wasn't going to mean it didn't happen. I wound up mentioning it in my lead and then briefly explaining what happened further down in the story. I didn't dwell on it because it didn't need it. It didn't factor in the outcome and there was plenty of other stuff to talk about.

Today, she lights me up on Facebook. Says I "chose to focus on the foolishness instead of the game," that I'm "downgrading the school district," and that "there were 800 at the game but 40,000 who weren't so let the folks who were there to tell it."
She even finished it off with a #NoClass.
So I guess the lesson here is, if 800 people witness something at a public event and it's never mentioned in the newspaper, then the other 40,000 people in town will never ever hear about it?

 

The coach being tossed is part of the story, especially if they were two ridiculous technicals and the game was a foulfest.

I've been on the bench when stuff like that has happened - heck, I got warned by an out-of-control official when I wasn't even on the bench (I was doing stats. Our player was tripped going over a screen and got called for an offensive foul and I said "she stuck her leg out." Turns out this official has a reputation for zeroing in on the best/most noticeable player on the floor and whistling five times).

I can speak from experience that some school districts - often those with a lot of image-consciousness and administrators who don't understand sports - have rules where if a coach or player gets ejected from a game, they have to write up reports to the school district and have a one-on-one conversation with the superintendent that includes a lot of confession and "this will never happen again," so I'm wondering if that was the case there.

 

"Coach, I just sat through a 32-minute (???) high school girls basketball game that featured 94 free throws. I am going to write whatever the &%^$ I want to write."

 

God love the coach for trying to win, but TOBALA 94 free throws in any basketball game.

 

Dealing with the aftermath of all-state selections right now and a football coach sent me an email wondering why I didn’t put his players stats in his bio (kid was a hybrid LB/S). I explained I wrote 25 bios of 65-75 words each and tried to make each of them different. He then fired back saying he didn’t believe me and was going to chart the all state selections as to who did and who didn’t have stats mentioned.

 

Team B was fouling to stop the clock, and Team A kept missing free throws. Then Team B had a girl, the best player on the floor, who basically took over the game. She kept driving the lane, getting fouled, and converted several three-point plays. So you actually had both teams fouling on every possession for the last 3-4 minutes of the game. Team A shot 32 free throws in the fourth quarter and Team B shot 14.

The amazing -- and frustrating -- part was, it damn near worked. Team A was down 24 in the third quarter, went on a run to cut it to 10 heading into the fourth, and eventually got it down to six in the final minute. Then they missed a couple of shots and ran out of players and it fizzled.
If Team A had made five or six more free throws or Team B missed a few more shots, the coach probably would have called it off sooner. But since the margin stayed in that 8-10 range it made sense to stick with it as long as possible. It was a perfect storm of nonsense.
What would have been really interesting was if the game had gone to overtime. Team B only had eight players dressed out. Three fouled and one got hurt, which is how they ended up with four players on the floor, and all four of them had at least three fouls. I have no idea what would have happened if they'd completely run out of players.