My life as a cub reporter at the Sports Desk

This should be my last week as a sports reporter. It’s almost a shame to retire so young from such an illustrious and rewarding career, but I believe that the time has come for me to hang up my cleats and move on. Besides, I’m pretty sure that there’s no danger of me joining the ranks NBC’s Bob Costas orChris Berman of ESPN.

Butch Walker, the publisher of the Dunlap Reporter was going to have to have surgery. He needed someone to cover Boyer Valley High School’s Friday night football games for him for at least a month. I’m pretty sure that his first choice was a former student of mine named Justin.

Justin is a premiere sports photographer. He was our yearbook’s photo editor last year and has sunk a lot of money into his equipment. Unfortunately for Butch, Justin had just gotten home from basic training for the National Guard and was headed to Alaska for several weeks on a photo-excursion with some uncle or something.

Butch’s next choice was Brett, a Junior and our mascot. Brett’s life long aspiration is to become a CPA. Not to cast aspersions on his writing abilities, but he’ll tell you himself that he’s more comfortable with numbers than words.

Be that as it may, he has served as an announcer for various 4-H livestock shows and junior rodeo events and he is at every game. Of course, how much of the game can you see from inside a foam bulldog head? Brett asked Butch for time to think about it, but told me almost immediately that he was going to decline.

If I remember right, I believe I actually had to offer to cover Boyer Valley Football for Butch before he (I hope not too reluctantly) made me his third choice. He had statistics forms for the head coach to fax him anyway, so the coaches would just fill them out and send them to me Monday morning instead. I’d do the write-up and send it to Butch’s wife and staff by deadline Tuesday.

Now, I’m not completely oblivious to the fact that I wouldn’t be everybody’s first choice to write sports. I coach a predominantly female sport that is often ridiculed or at least marginalized as a non-sport. I’m an Art teacher for Cripe’s sake. Those two put together and people tend to think I’m a sissy. If they don’t suspect I’m gay, I’m sure they at least think that I’m way too “in touch with my feminine side” to like or know anything about sports.

I’ll admit this much; growing up I wasn’t good at sports, I had a short attention span, and I was bad at memorizing names and numbers. This doomed me where communicating with other guys is concerned. I couldn’t keep the names of rock bands, brands of stereos, or makes and models of cars in my brain, let alone stereo component and car parts.

So I’d hang out with girls. That was fine, I didn’t like competing with guys or comparing myself to other guys and I DID like girls. Man, did I like girls. Unfortunately for me, maybe because I treated them well, because I listened to them, or who knows, maybe they thought I was gay too, all the girls I had crushes on only wanted to “just be friends.”

I’ll also admit that I didn’t have a lot of respect and probably unfairly prejudged and stereotyped a lot of “jocks.” The athletes in my high school seemed to me to be arrogant (even when they lost), treated girls like disposable tissues, and were hypocrites where health and fitness were concerned. They had better bodies than me because they worked out and exercised, but they deliberately drank till they puked or passed out on a weekly basis, if not more often.

But, over the course of the last 15 years or so my attitude has changed. I see that sports is an outstanding opportunity to teach character. Coaches see kids in a context that regular classroom teacher’s don’t. Everything from work-ethic to resolving conflicts with teammates. I’ve read books by Tiger’s Manager Sparky Anderson, Husker legend Tom Osborne, and UCLA basketball Coach John Wooden that I feel have helped shape me and I hope have helped me shape the students I coach.

I’ve come to realize that successful jocks can’t be dumb jocks. Strength and skill aren’t enough. The guys who are starters in high school are the ones who were paying attention in junior high. You have to know how to execute a play and how to compensate for the unexpected. Even a game of force like football has strategy as subtle as chess and the winners are the ones who take advantage of that fact.

And I have watched at least ten high school football games a year for that last twelve years. I still don’t follow the NFL or NCAA that much, I’ll catch a couple games of each per year. Frankly high school football is a lot more fun. It’s much more unpredictable. I also like it better because I know who’s playing. Now that I’ve been at BV for five years or so, I had the Juniors and Seniors way back in junior high.

And I’ve come to recognize the value sports holds as a cultural lynch pin. What I mean is, girls may talk about their feeling, they may talk about guys, they may talk about shoes. Guys, guys talk about their work, the weather, and sports. Fortunately for me, I’ve learned enough about football and baseball to hold my own. What’s more, I’ve learned that if you ask questions, guys who know more about it are all too happy to share what they know. That way you don’t sound like a freak or a snob, you just sound like either you don’t have satellite or your wife won’t let you waste all day in front of the tube.

I have to tell you, there’s no seat in the stadium like the one I’ve had this past month. Stay out of the coaches’ way, use the telephoto lens, and don’t trip on the chain gang and it’s amazing what you get to see and hear. Several times I’ve had to step out of the way of a train wreck that crossed out of bounds. Of course, I never seem to click the shutter button in time to capture it.

Nothing compares to being up on the edge of the field, only two or three yards ahead of the action. Why watch millionaires play on TV when you can experience the action up front. The best seat is to be standing the whole game and it only comes with a press pass.

Click HERE to read one of my football stories

A funny thing happened to me on the way to the football game…

I had just finished my weekly column at about 5:30 last Friday. It was the September 11th one, it may have been pretty cheesy and sentimental, but, you know, it’s an emotional holiday. Poit is, it left me in a pretty patriotic mood. This set the stage…

I gathered the Cheer squad to get in the van to drive to an away game but I left my keys on a table in my classroom so I ran back across the street to school to get them.

As you know, Iowa still has the first in the nation primary elections, so as I came back out the girls were all excited because a Presidential candidate was stumping on a neighbor’s porch across from the school. Some of the volunteers asked if the cheerleaders would like to have their picture taken with the candidate. I knew it was a cheesy photo op for him, but I figured it was exposure for us too, so I let them do it. I took a picture too and it got in the local paper here, the Dunlap Reporter, and we’ll probably use it in the yearbook too.

I walked up to Democratic Senator John Edwards from South Carolina, shook his hand and told him I thought he’d done a good job on the debates in Albuquerque the night before. For some people that would have been no big deal, others would have refused to shake a Democrats hand, but it was kind of fun for me just because of my background as a political new junkie.

Sen. John Edwards and the Boyer Valley Cheer Squad

Did I ever tell you about the time I met Republican Senator John McCain? I was on the staff of the weekly high school supplement to the Phoenix Gazette as a Freshman in high school. He had just gotten elected to Congress for his first term. Strong handshake, but he’s one of those people who grabs ya at the knuckles and doesn’t let you shake palm to palm- at least he was them. Anyway, at the time I didn’t trust him, maybe because of his handshake and decided I didn’t like him. Of course now, I have a lot more respect for him, he’s one of my favorite Republicans. I’d like to think we’ve both matured a lot
Say, that reminds me, did I ever tell you that Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher Curt Schilling was a Senior at Shadow Mountain when I was a Freshman? Yeah, I guess I have huh? What? “like a million times?” Oh, okay, sorry. Is this too much name dropping?

Edwards, right. Well, I thought it was kind of funny, his people said that MSNBC was coming and asked if we’d do a cheer, well the zipper on one of the girl’s skirts had broke, so I had run back into school to get a bunch of safety pins when this request through another girl into a moral dilemma of crisis proportions.

“Wait, wait, Mr. Mallory, shouldn’t we find out what some of his positions are before we do a chant for him?”

I was thinking, “Uh, you’ve already posed for a publicity photo with him, this is a little late, kiddo,” but I didn’t say that. I suggested cheering for Boyer Valley and not customizing it for him, dilemma solved.

This wasn’t good enough apparently, as debate continued while we pinned the skirt the best we could.

“How about this,” I suggested, “Yell ‘Hey VOTERS, Get Fired UP!’ that way it’s pro-participation, yet bi-partisan, how about that?”

This idea appealed to the whole squad, but of course by this time Edwards had started his speech and we were faced with another dilemma- not one of politics or morals, but of manners. They didn’t want to interrupt, but they also didn’t want to make our exit too conspicuous either. We listened patiently for several minutes and snuck off to our van quietly. Fortunately we made it to the game on time.

The next day in Yearbook class one who’s notoriously Republican told the one who had had the hang up, “It would’ve been Okay, I found out he’s a Democrat and Democrats are against abortion, so it would’ve been okay.”

“Uh, actually,” I tried to explain, “generally Republicans are more likely to be Pro-Life and Pro-Choice advocates tend to get more support from Democrats.”

“But I talked to Jen (a former cheerleader who now attends Georgetown University), and she says she’s anti-abortion and she’s a Democrat?” she said.
“Sure, I oppose abortion and I’m a Democrat, that’s why you have to be careful of making generalizations and assumptions, but Jen and I are kind of unusual, generally you’d expect more Republicans to be more strongly opposed to abortion,” I explained.

“Oh,” said another student, “all I know is my whole family is like totally Republican.”

“All my family is like- ‘huh? Politic? Duh, huh?’” said the notoriously Republican cheerleader.
All I know is that I doubt Edwards stands a chance against Gebhardt or Howard Dean in the primaries, so it barely matters what he thinks about anything. I did appreciate that he’s the first and only Democrat to take a stand and say that he thinks that Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” program is bad for public education and should be eliminated.

Sigh, then again, I would have wished that 17 year olds would be a little more aware of what’s going on in society. That does make me miss teaching U.S. History. At least I’m trying to help them be more aware by teaching Journalism.

Well, another Friday night, another football game. I hope no Presidential Candidates show up at this one.

6:28 pm, gotta go, talk to you next week.