Saturday, May 24, 2008
The DC Sports Box has received a few requests from local teams for coverage of their summer sports schedule. That's probably a good thing considering we appear to have lost our Nationals credential. I just found out about it on Friday from Al and I haven't had a chance to talk with anyone to get the details. I have a few suspicions as to why we lost the credential but nothing official. Anyhow...
One of the requests came from the IWFL (Independent Women's Football League). The DC Divas are a local football team that plays next to FedEx field and would like for us to cover their games. They play something like 4 home games so it's a pretty trivial matter to go out and support them. They're also very close to a few of us so it makes the decision doubly easy.
I headed out to FedEx field to meet Kirk Queen for the shoot. The game was scheduled for a 7pm start and was against the Central PA Vipers. When I arrived I noticed that the Vipers had only brought approximately 15 - 20 players. I spoke with a few people on the Divas sideline and they said that the Vipers are a new team and Central PA is not a hub for football players. As a result they expected a heavily lopsided game.
While there I made a point to seek out Allyson Hamlin. She's the QB for the Divas and somebody I grew up with. We both attended the same elementary, middle, and high school. We also both played on the same teams for several years. Her dad, Paul Hamlin, along with my dad, coached several of our sporting teams over the years. I was very surprised to find that Paul had purchased the Divas a few years ago and is now the majority owner. Pretty small world...
While Kirk talked with the team photographers and some other people I used the pre-game time to catch up with Paul and Allyson. It was fun to see them and to hear about how the team is doing. I told them that we'd be there for the rest of their home games this summer and that we should talk in the offseason about some other ways we could help support them.
Allyson was right in her pre-game assessment - the game was heavily one-sided in favor of the Divas. I wanted to get some shots of Ally looking into the sun but that didn't happen - the defensive back for the Divas kept returning all the punts from the Vipers for touchdowns! I don't think Allyson got a chance to play until 3/4 of the way through the second quarter!
It was a pretty fun event to shoot because it was quiet and low key. Everyone seemed to have a really good time and I got a handful of decent pictures. It was good to get some football practice under my belt. It's the one sport I've shot extremely little of. I think I've actually shot more water polo games than football games at this point. Given that there are so few football games in a season it makes sense to go out and practice during the summer whenever I have the chance.
After the game I had a really difficult time writing up an article. The Divas didn't post a box score or even a game writeup and so I was really going 100% off memory of the game and my photos for my article. As you can see the quality suffered. Please go read about the DC Divas 35-0 win over the Central PA Vipers.
