Double wrap-up: Soccer and Urban Bowl

Last week was filled with something on my schedule every day from Tuesday-Saturday. Add a balancing act with an autism documentary I will be broadcasting soon, and the result is a lack of time on my blog.

On Thursday, I called my first soccer game in my short announcing career. Two U10 traveling teams from River Falls played against each other in a game that nearly didn't get televised thanks to a heavy band of showers a half-hour before the game began. It cleared up 10 minutes before the start and our two-man camera crew scurried to get the match on tape. Fortunately, weather wasn't a problem during the game. My co-worker called it a "home video" with graphics; there was no scoreboards or bleachers, just a field with parents lined up along the sideline in their captains chairs. I kept time with my stopwatch.

The lack of preparation time caused by on and off showers led to a difficult time trying to match names and numbers. My partner, a parent himself who knew some of the kids, was pretty solid. I probably won't be working with him again anytime soon as we don't televise too many events in western Wisconsin, but it helped move the game along. However, the problem with parents on the same sideline as our game camera makes wide shots impossible; the parents get in the shot and block a lot of action on the near sideline. I'm sure they'll enjoy watching the broadcast.

Two days later, I was on the crew broadcasting the 2nd annual Urban Bowl on SPNN at Griffin Stadium. It was by far the longest high school football game I've worked on. The kickoff was scheduled for 3:00 p.m., but was delayed by a half-hour with no explanation. The game itself wasn't much faster, not finishing up until around 6:10 p.m. The game was sloppy throughout with a few nice plays sprinkled in. The Urban Bowl crew was hoping for 5,000 fans and fell far short. The game can't be controlled, but starting the game a half-hour late isn't the most respectful gesture to fans and players. My graphics left more to be desired; I wasn't happy with my performance. Overall, it looked like everyone was a little rusty.

I'm still working on getting the AAU Meltdown tournament televised. I will keep you posted.

New look, minor change

As I sit here with little to do on the 2008 rendition of Independence Day, I thought this would be the perfect time to retool the look of my site. I'm still trying to figure out how to make the poll results easier to read, but I've wanted to change the layout for a while. My goal was to make the site a little cleaner than before.

You may also have noticed that I haven't removed the poll I conducted last month from my site. I'm going to leave worthwhile polls on my site on more of a long-term basis. Showing past poll results may help tell me how many people contribute with the more interactive features of my site, but I also would like to use them for future broadcasts of high school basketball games. Obviously, the polls are VERY unscientific. However, they may be useful in situations where I need to kill time, especially with the amount of Gophers information I talk about during games.

I hope you like the new look and change I'm making to the site. If you're not a fan of change, don't expect me to make drastic renovations in the near future.