Of course at that point they have answered their own question – I don’t do sports. Report on it, that is.
First and most importantly in becoming a sports reporter one must know something – specifically the game.
Actually, I have done a fair amount of sports photography, but in my oft dual capacity of being a pictures and words guy, I am seriously lacking in sports words.
The reason I don’t know the games, or haven’t taken the time to learn are unknown. I must qualify this, too. What I have never learned are the chief games that hit the front pages of local papers. So if it’s football, baseball, tennis, volleyball, softball, basketball and a myriad of other mainstream sports, one at times would do just as well to put teams of dancing zombies on the field or floor and strap to my head a loudspeaker connected to the Chicago Transit Authority for 90 minutes for the sense I make of it.
Yet I find things interesting when I do attend, and those things are the ones I would center my sports news article on.
To illustrate this I have written a mock sports story on a fictitious game between the Marshall High School Cardinals and the Lake Mills L-Cats - two non fictitious teams. The names I use will indeed be fictitious, but any names that do exist on either of these two teams will be complete and utter coincidence. Here goes:
LAKE MILLS – With a cool faint breeze coming out of the north, the Marshall Cardinals flew in to touch down on the grid-iron of the Lake Mills L-Cats. The question looming over the field was whether the L-Cats would devour those red birds from western Dane County.
Having done research with those whom are evidently not fans of the Marshall team, it was originally thought that the school colors – red and white – were symbolic of our patriotic history with red standing for blood and white for bandages. Still another apparent non-Cardinal fan suggested that the name was based on a layer of the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church. While this suggestion was summarily dismissed, the nagging fact remained that Nashotah Seminary’s team is the known as the Black Monks.
Two and two quickly became four as their logo with the crested red bird of the north made it safely evident that they weren’t a group of young ornithologists – in addition to the logos, there simply was not a pair of binoculars in the bunch.
From the other side of the field the Lake Mills L-Cats crawled ready to pounce. After previous research on this team, the origins of their mascot name dating from WW II is well known. The reigning question about their name: Why do they keep it?
Really. Even they must be tiring of explaining what an L-Cat is. And half of them don’t know, making up such rubbish as “it’s a polite way to say ‘Hell-Cat,’” or “it stands for the L of Lake Mills.” Come on. Then they’d be called the LM-Cats, wouldn’t they? Even during the depression budgetary constraints didn’t get bad enough that letters had to be cut from team mascot names.
So the rival between these two moderate sized school teams - scientific names Cardinalis cardinalis v. Felis "L" catus -began as the Cardinals’ red and white set out to clash with the L-Cats’ blue and gold.
And what a clash – just the sight of red, white, blue and gold together on that field of green was enough to make an interior decorator nauseous.
At that point conjecture sets in as to the advantage of each teams color scheme on the psyche of the opposing team.
Apparently overpaid, and wanting to flaunt it, an official pulled a silver dollar out of his pocket and offered a coin toss to determine who would be kicking off.
Without first inspecting the coin, the captains of each team yelled out their preferred coin face as it was in mid-air. Lake Mills won the toss and elected to kick.
The kicker’s impact sent the oblong ball, euphemistically called ‘the pigskin’ deep into Marshall’s half of the field.
As if pre-determined Marshall’s Einer Tingvold caught the ball and dropped to one knee as if incapacitated, leading one to believe more than ever before that the two battling teams should very seriously reconsider their uniform color schemes.
But it turned out that Tingvold was okay, and there was evidently no animosity over his fake injury.
After the initial play both teams went into a huddle. It is never entirely possible to understand what is discussed in the huddle. One of the last bastions of closed meetings in public, despite the fact we live in a Democracy and that the rule applies even in teams of institutions like public schools and universities, it continues to be overlooked by legislators and members of the country’s free press.
Returning from the huddle it was apparent that the young players used the time to make decisions without letting the general public in on the outcome. But it was equally unknown to each team and the spectators, providing some sort of equity to the huddle situation.
Lake Mills lined up flanking the ball as center John Behling leaned into to the oblong orb and QB Oscar Stanke moved in to a rather colloquial position behind Behling - a refreshing departure from the all to large effort to remain politically correct in public behavior.
Barking out what is evidently his locker combination, Behling apparently became annoyed with Stanke, snapping the ball into Stanke’s hands. Stanke moved back but was shortly bowled over by the Card’s junior Orin Sorenson.
Moving ahead less than a couple yards, Lake Mills tried this again, with Behling equally annoyed by Stanke spewing another locker combination. Again Sorenson moved in to take down Stanke.
Evidence of a grudge-match ensued as the scene repeated itself, demonstrating Stanke’s uncanny ability to memorize locker combinations.
With unimaginative choreography taking place under the lights on the field, another bit of sports related news seemed to be developing over at the concession stand.
It seems that the local boosters had introduced an entirely new menu. While including the usual popcorn and bagged savory snacks, along with a variety of soft drinks, this year they offered pizza, hot dogs, brats and natchos.
A surplus in the booster budget evidently allowed for the purchase of a couple small pizza ovens.
The menu indicated that the offerings included pepperoni, sausage and a vegetarian pizza. However concessions director and parent Marian Tomlinson said to this point in the season the vegetarian pizza was a rare sale, leading her to believe that the menu would be geared entirely toward the carnivores in the crowd next season.
Even though this crowd made it hard to discuss the matter with bouts of yelling, cheers and jeers overpowering customer orders at the food stand, Mrs. Tomlinson was able to point out a little recipe secret with the natcho sauce.
Letting the “L-Cat” out of the bag, she noted that the usual #10 can of commercial natcho sauce was the base, but then she pointed out that the special zing in the sauce’s flavor was due to the addition of whole capers and several drops of Tobasco sauce, “…just enough to warm up the cool fall air,” Tomlinson said.
Of course, along with the regular fare, there are home baked desserts, that booster members bring to donate to the concession stand.
The mother of new student and football team member Bobby Behrends, Mrs. Becky Behrends, introduced a new flavor to the mix.
While Rice Crispy bars are a perennial favorite, Behrends tried to explain the simple but tasteful ingredient, at first difficult to understand as the fans kept coming to their feet and howling at the field.
But with perseverance, the secret ingredient was revealed as a touch of pumpkin pie spice, giving the old standby treat an added dimension.
"It's okay I suppose, if you like that sort of thing," Mrs. Tomlinson said of Behrends' treat, indicating it may be an acquired taste for some.
Kudos and bravos continued to go to the deserving concessionaires as these new items along with the former snacks sold consitently, albeit difficult for anyone to give or take orders with all of the noise near the field.
Fortunately it all came to a crescendo right near the end, followed by a welcomed silence on a crisp autumn evening as the stands emptied, the stadium lights extinguished, leaving only the echoes of athletic exuberance and the faint smell of popcorn and bratwurst in the air.
(Editor’s note: The final score of last Friday’s game: Lake Mills 24, Marshall 26 sending the Cardinals to the state finals.)
Alright, that may be a bit of an exaggeration. It has been my honor to cover a variety of events over the years.The news bug bit me while living on the island of Guam. Prior to that I had been a music major with an emphasis on opera - needless to say there were limited operatic opportunities on Guam or the Commonwealth of the Mariannas, leaving me with the choice of pursuing a career in music elsewhere for a period of two or more years, or staying with my high school sweetheart and wife (who has at this point put up with me for 31 years) who was at the time assigned to Andersen AFB, Guam as a member of the USAF.
It was my intent to be a photojournalist, which is what I tell people I am to this day. But during every editorial relationship someone has found out that I can write a complete sentence, roping me into the additional role of reporter/writer. It has allowed me to cover happenings in the Pacific, and over the past 20 plus years I have covered communities and individuals at their best and coversely, sometimes tragically, at their worst.
After returning to Wisconsin, touching on agricultural journalism seemed to go hand in hand with the decade we owned a farm and started a family.
The journey continues with mainstream magazine and newspaper work making every assignment an adventure. The nature of this journey doesn’t allow me to always report happy news or to share pleasant photographs. But it has allowed me to share facts about fascinating individuals and events with untold numbers of readers.
It can be difficult when we, my colleagues and I, must report unpopular truths. But having lived places where the press is not independent of the current rule, it becomes obvious that it is much easier to deliver unpopular truths and have readers feel they can trust the source, than to modify information and toss every ounce of that commodity of credibility and public trust out the window.
And if we are wrong, we want to hear about it. I’m merely a journalist, and the newspaper work I do is usually related to events or people in the area's small communities. But community news is “where it’s at” precisely because of this.
If Sam Donaldson gets something wrong in his large market reporting, the only person he’s accountable to is his producer or the person who signs his paycheck. If my colleagues and I need to clarify something, there is a great likelihood that we will see the subject of our stories in the near future in the same or only slightly different venue, providing an accountability directly to the readership.
“The Media” is and are something too broad to make general statements about, but it is important to remember that ‘freedom of the press’ is not a freedom set aside for those in the forth estate. It is a freedom set aside for everyone, with journalists and publications only the tools to help you enjoy that right. If you don’t insist on it, it could disappear.
It goes without saying that freedom of the press, when it comes to sports reporting, is generally better off if I stay in the realm of general news and the variety it offers. If I had leaned that way, it would probably have been in the style of the late Howard Cosell, but even he would likely have missed out on the secret ingredient in the Rice Crispy bars.
Best to all,
Lloyd
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21SEP04 LS
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