Flashback: Kiara Buford profile

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Here's an article I wrote for my news reporting class last year on Kiara Buford, before she started her senior season at Central. How time flies...

The high school girls basketball season has yet to start, but the University of Minnesota is already banking on a top player who has yet to complete her senior year.

Kiara Buford, 18, has played in the state tournament every year for Central High School in St. Paul and can play at the point guard, shooting guard and post positions. She was a contributing factor for last year’s Central girls basketball team that won the class AAAA state championship while setting an all-time record for most wins in a single season, finishing with a 32-0 record.

While Buford averaged only 12.3 points per game last season, down from 20.8 points per game in her sophomore season, people close to her said her skills outweigh the numbers.

“She can be as good as any player in the country at her position,” said Willie Taylor, head coach of the Central girls basketball team.

“She can dribble down the court and score. She’s also really good at being part of a team,” said Megan Howard, Buford’s teammate since eighth grade.

The University of Minnesota appears to agree with those remarks. Buford signed her letter of intent to play for the women’s basketball team Wednesday and verbally committed to play as a Golden Gopher her junior year.

“It’s close to home and I can play for the people that I grew up playing for,” Buford said.
Buford is also excited that she will don the maroon and gold with former Central teammate Ashley Ellis-Milan, as Buford said both she and Ellis-Milan are good friends.

Buford will be the third Central graduate in the school’s history to play at Minnesota, a list that features Monica Brown and Ellis-Milan.

Taylor is thrilled that Buford will be playing close to her high school.

“I can tell people ‘You know what, look at all the Central players at the U,’” Taylor said.

Her parents and extended relatives are also happy; they come to watch Buford play almost every game.
“She’s always been a leader. Just to see her grow so much in that role and really work hard to push herself is amazing, both on the court and academically,” said Tracy Buford, her mother.

Tracy can speak from more than a parent’s perspective; she played high school basketball at Highland Park Senior High School in St. Paul and continued at Grand View College in Des Moines, Iowa.

“Everything that she has been able to accomplish just gives me so much pride to watch her play,” Tracy Buford said.

As Buford continues to cement her status as one of Minnesota’s top high school players, she said that basketball has taught her other things that she can apply to her life outside the sport.

Beyond motivation for school, Buford said that basketball has helped her with communication and her social interaction with people outside the Central basketball team, assets that prove valuable when she is working at Old Country Buffet in Roseville.

Buford has two more reasons to serve as motivation, a 12-year-old brother and a 7-year-old sister. Tracy Buford said both of Buford’s siblings watch everything that she does.

“(Buford) is very mature for her age and she’s very responsible,” Tracy Buford said, “She has done a great job teaching them how hard she’s had to work to get to where she is,”

That hard work paid off on the court throughout last season.

Central’s roster featured four high-caliber players who transferred from other St. Paul schools, adding talent to a team that included Buford and Howard, who were not transfer students. With all that talent, Central consistently won by large margins, including an 18-point victory in the state championship game. Central’s dominance sparked criticism that the team did not win the state title legitimately.

Their undefeated season was also speculated to be the trigger in a rule enacted by the Minnesota State High School League in March, making transfer students ineligible to participate in any league-sanctioned varsity activities for one year.

The media scrutiny helped bring the team together and had little impact on the team’s effort to win a state title.

“You got to play as a team and know what it takes to win,” Buford said about her experience from the tournament.

“The media are going to say stuff, but you can’t really listen to them,” Howard said.

As Buford gears for her senior season and a run for back-to-back state championships, Taylor said that she will have to take a role as a player and coach with a bench that is not as deep as last season.

Buford hopes to continue her winning ways at Central as preparation for her collegiate career.

“My goals are to make it back to the state tournament and take a leadership role, since I’m a senior,” she said.

Leader or not, Buford will have plenty of fans supporting her next year.

“I’ll definitely be cheering her on,” Howard said.

Should Central qualify for the state tournament this season, Buford, along with Howard and Cyonna West, would become the only Central players to play in the state tournament in all four years of high school.

"All Shook Up"

This article was written for an assignment in my magazine writing class. However, since I feel stories shouldn't go to waste, I will post the graded versions of this and a profile of Theairra Taylor to the site. The articles will appear in a different font than my regular posts.

Photo: Boler suited up during her playing days at Bloomington-Kennedy.

Shakila Boler is on the fast track to help her new team do big things this year, but her team will have to wait a while.

Shakila Boler is hoping to make history this season, but it has nothing to do with performance yet.

The Minneapolis Roosevelt guard tore her ACL and MCL this summer, an injury that normally forces players to sit out a year to heal. Boler is going through an intense rehab program to buck that trend.

"Doctors are saying that she will be ready in January to start playing," says coach Tim Williams. "She's way ahead of schedule."

Boler averaged 16.2 points per game last year with former school Bloomington-Kennedy. Although she will miss the first half of this season, Boler will add experience and shooting skills to a strengthening Roosevelt team.

With or without her, Williams says his team is ready to take on the toughest foe in the Minneapolis City Conference.

"We will be a great team and compete for the conference championship with South," he says.

When Boler returns to the court, Williams will look to shake up South's dominance in the conference and bring his team to the class AA state tournament, something he has never done as coach.

"With her, we will have four solid guards that could start on any team all on one team, and that means serious matchup problems for opponents," Williams says.

Additional graphics

Here are more of the redesigned graphics for the upcoming season. One feature I hope to add this year is an in-game box score that better details who is providing the points for both teams, versus the leading scorers, where the top three are listed. If I can get a statistician, I'd like to add additional information on screen.

Graphics preview

The snapshots below are the new graphics I will use for the 2008-09 season. I took the graphics shown on this year's Olympics (Not NBC's red and gold design) and modified a few things. To compare them with last year's graphics package, visit my YouTube page where every game I televised from the 2007-08 season can be found. I'll show the others later, but feel free to comment.

Basketball coming soon!

I wish there was more activity to report on this blog, but I have to keep up with my schoolwork too. It's business as usual there; I'm not struggling in any classes, although I feel I may come up short again of making the dean's list. The key, as always, is to turn in your assignments on time. I've reported on a number of interesting topics in my journalism classes. I also have completed two sports stories for my magazine writing class and will post them on my Blogspot page since they won't be published in any written magazine. I will also post an assignment from last year to keep folks interested until the start of the new basketball season.

Speaking of basketball, I will return as a commentator starting with the Pat Paterson tournament at Hamline University during Thanksgiving break. Right now, I plan to broadcast a doubleheader with a potential Central/Centennial and South/Hopkins match-up for November 29th. Other tentative games include Cretin-Derham Hall/Central on December 16th. Many teams haven't submitted their schedules yet, so it's still a wait-and-see game.

I redesigned the graphics and will show you a preview of what they will look like on my next post. If you're not familiar to my broadcasts, I follow the "flex-pick" model NBC uses for Sunday Night Football; I pick games featuring top teams in Minneapolis and St. Paul or teams relatively close to each other on paper. In other words, you won't see a Central/Harding or a South/Henry type game.

In the meantime, you can vote in my "fun" poll before things get serious soon. I'll provide updates as tipoff draws closer.

Broadcast wrap-up: Johnson vs. Como Park

As I expected, I came in not feeling too intimidated about having my every word recorded for television Friday. Broderick and I have found our chemistry and it can lead to some humorous conversations. You could say we mix summary and bar talk. One of my co-workers thought I came down too harsh on one of the Como Park coaches after he was flagged for unsportsmanlike conduct (he was arguing a poor choice by the referee to allow a Johnson punt return for a touchdown after a penalty was called for an illegal block, something I saw on the replay). I call things as I see them, but am working on the balance between judgmental and constructive criticism. On that note, I do appreciate feedback, even if no one thinks I did anything wrong. I got used to play-by-play after a while, but always want to improve.

There were several new crew members and it showed in the production from what I saw on the monitor. The replay transitions were choppy and the camerawork wasn't on par at times. I understand SPNN is trying to spread the opportunities to people, but I feel sports crews should at least have some familiarity with the sport they're televising. That way, if they are learning a new skill, they don't have to try and remember how the game works and work the equipment at the same time. It's very difficult to pluck people at random and hope the program will turn out.

For the record, Johnson won the game 35-6. The botched call turned out not to make any difference in the game, although it's not a good sign when controversy dominates the game recap. Central lost last weekend, so Johnson looks like they will re-establish themselves as the team to beat in St. Paul, but there's still a few games to go. Johnson's running game is their strength; five backs carried the ball against Como. Their passing game needs work, they followed a 148-yard passing game the previous week with two interceptions against Como and lost the turnover battle. One-dimensional offenses are always at risk of being shut down easily, but Johnson's depth at running back is a plus.

Todd and Coley take the helm this week with the Harding-Arlington game.

Broadcast preview: Johnson vs. Como Park

Greetings everyone. There hasn't been much to blog about in the sports or broadcasting world for the last month. There was some audio problems with the NC Heat-Minnesota Stars game and at this point, I doubt I will be posting it online. Someone on my YouTube page said no one would care about audio distortion. Trust me, in television, people are much faster to point out your mistakes than your accomplishments. That's why we fall on the old cliché, "No news is good news." The last thing I want to do is broadcast a piece of junk with my name on it; people who take this seriously know doing so hampers credibility.

On the plus side, I got a new computer and upgraded to Adobe Production CS3 Premium. In short, I have the latest versions of all the software I use to create my own games. I still need to figure out how to install a plug-in or two. Also, the video encoder on Adobe Premiere Pro improved significantly. What that means for you are full-length games in high quality. No more trouble reading graphics or watching a spectacular play develop.

As you may have guessed, the title refers to tomorrow's high school football game featuring Johnson and Como Park at James Griffin Stadium on SPNN, channel 19. This will be my first football play-by-play assignment. Unfortunately, the coaches aren't too quick about posting stats on Maxpreps or any other site this year, so I can't tell you too much about the teams statistically. Como Park is hurting offensively after Greg Morse's departure (graduation). They're last in the conference for points scored and bring an 0-2 record this weekend. Johnson is 2-0 and give up the fewest points in the conference. On paper, it looks like Johnson will coast to victory, but I'll find out more when I visit with the coaches tomorrow. If any of you have dreams about a St. Paul school going to state, no existing St. Paul City Conference team has qualified since 1981 when Johnson got to state.

Broderick Bell is my partner. This is the only game where I'll be in the booth for SPNN. I'm their primary graphics designer, so I imagine it won't be long before they ask me to return to graphics. After calling basketball the last two years, I'm excited to try another sport.

From the vault

The AAU tournament I covered last week was a logistical mess. We managed to televise both games, but it will take some time to sort through everything and spew out the pair of games we televised. Both were close, despite somewhat depleted rosters, but fatigue may have come into play for the Gold Division bracket; the Metro Stars and Minnesota Suns appeared exhausted throughout their championship game.

In the meantime, I pulled a video featuring my only appearance so far on any of the Twin Cities TV stations from the archive vault. A lot has changed since that time, which I suppose should be no coincidence.

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.