Windy Weekend

May 2, 2010

Quite an eventful weekend in the local sporting world.  Saturday was a wet and cold day for shooting.  We (Kayla and myself) started out at a softball game between the Hellgate Knights and the cross-town rival Sentinel Spartans.  Sentinel was already up 5-2 when we arrived.  The Spartans went on to win the game 8-3.  Our highlights mainly consisted of an RBI double off of the fence in center by Spartans first-baseman Katie Focher and a solo Sentinel home run to deep left-center by Riliey Cullip.  I’m still struggling to perfect my softball filming.  On Cullip’s home run I completely lost the ball and had a choppy pan past the fence to finally locate the ball after it had already landed… I’ll get better but the sport has definitely been giving me some fresh photog challenges.

After that game we headed to catch some of the Mavericks matchup against the Billings Scarlets.  Let’s just say that game was all Missoula en route to a 21-2 Mavs win.  The Mavericks have been looking really solid so far in this young legion season.

After gathering a plethora of Mavs highlights from the game we headed over to the infamous Maggotfest to get a VO-SOT from the rugby action.  As fate would have it, the perfect interviewee in Rich Sondermann (a player for the local Missoula Maggots squad) walked right up to us and started conversing.  He actually had a  few staples just above his right eye that were securing a fresh wound he’d received from an earlier game.  After some great soundbites and game shots we headed back to the station to edit and script the day’s footage.  Luckily the rain didn’t really start pouring until we had already declared the day’s filming deeds as done.

Today was more baseball under drier but windier skies.  We covered a pair of Legion games as the Bozeman Bucs edged out the Scarlets 9-8 and then the Mavericks defeated the Bucs 9-5.  The biggest hit of the day’s action came off of the bat of Bucs player Corbin Gates, as he hammered a solo shot deep over the wall in left to put the Bucs up 4-1.  But it was birthday boy Nathan Jewett (who I was informed turned 16 this weekend) who put the Mavs on top 5-4 with a 3-run triple in the bottom of the 3rd inning.

Despite the windy and therefore somewhat cold conditions, the quantity of baseball action this weekend has me excited for summer to be here… only two more weeks of school!