Since leaving SVM late in 2015, my occasional sojourns back
into journalism have consisted mainly of covering football games. I’ve also done
a few basketball, softball, and baseball games. On Thursday night, I covered volleyball
for the first time in at least seven years. I say, at least, because I don’t
remember the last volleyball match I covered.
If I am also being
truthful, I never thought I was very good at covering volleyball. It’s not
about liking or disliking the sport – I like volleyball just fine – but I have always
found that I struggled to retain anything that happened in a match. Other
sports, I often rely on playing back events in a game in my mind to help weave
a story. I supplement my memory with my notes and stats. With volleyball, I am
whispering numbers of jerseys with each pass, then scribbling notes and
recording stats between plays. It’s a blur of numerical nonsense.
So how do I approach writing about it? I usually try to
formulate some sort of trend out the numbers. Thursday’s match – the 1A Polo
Regional Championship – included an impressive run in Game 3 by the eventual
victors. In the interviews, the coach highlighted the rotation at the end of Game
3. One plus two equals lede – as in the lede of my story which I concocted in
my head during the frantic drive home to type the story by the 8:45 deadline.
From the lede I navigated to the turning point of the match –
another run by Newman in the middle of Game 2, and then I wrapped up by talking
about the start of the match last where the Comets were put in a hole by Fulton
in Game 1.
My advice to anyone writing about sports, a good gamer
rarely starts at the beginning of the game and works to the end. Instead, it
goes straight to the most important part. From there, it might go forward to
the end before going back to the start. Heck, depending on the space available
and if anything, significant happened, you might not even mention the start of
the game.
The same is true with fiction. It’s not always linear, and
probably shouldn’t be. Use the sequencing of the story to help build the narrative.
Well, that’s all for me. Here’ a link to my gamer for SVM,
if you are so inclined:
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