03/27/2024
Spread the love

By: John Clark

best laid plans

Friday night found me in my usual position – covering a High School Football game for bladenonline.com – but this Friday night was much more challenging than usual.

I traveled up to St. Pauls to cover the East Bladen Eagles. We had another reporter at ‘The Castle’ to handle West Bladen vs. Whiteville.

The dark mass of clouds off to the north and west was the first inkling that things would be different, but it still didn’t dawn on me when I walked past the Eagle locker room that was still full of players at 7:15 that we were in a lightning delay.

I was first told that they were going to try and start at 7:40 as I stood around waiting with Elizabethtown’s Carl Newkirk and former West Bladen football player Zachary Smith.

However 7:40 came and went due to more flashes in the area, and Sonny Jones whose son Ray kicks for West Bladen texted me that it was pouring at West.

So we stood around and talked and waited. WWAY-TV’s John Rendleman called wanting to know the status at West Bladen – he was coming to shoot some video – I relayed that they were in a delay, too.

Former West Bladen Coach Matt Hill who is now the basketball coach at St. Pauls came down from his perch above the press box – he wasn’t interested in staying up there and being a lightning rod. We talked and still we waited. For over an hour we waited and talked… but not once did I check my pockets.

I am definitely ‘Old School’ in my note-taking approach for sports events, and I take a lot of ribbing from acquaintances, especially when I pull 3 or 4 folded up sheets of paper out of my back pocket and start scribbling short-hand notes about the action that are incomprehensible to most people. However I have been doing this on-and-off since 1973. It is my system, and it’s hard to teach old dogs new tricks.

Finally the officials came out, followed by the St. Pauls band, then the cheerleaders and the teams. I made my way to the visitors sideline right before kick-off, reached in my back pocket and …. no paper… nothing.

My first thought was that I could borrow a sheet from the statisticians. However, East Bladen’s Alan West keeps his stats on an electronic device – no paper needed.

A quick scan of other people in my area produced no more likely opportunities for paper, so I searched my wallet and came up with one ATM receipt. So there you have it, I scribbled almost the entire play-by-play of the first half on the back of an ATM receipt.

I shared my predicament with Bladen County Recreation Director Grant Pait later in the half, and Grant promised to buy me a small tablet or paper notebook. I told him the problem wasn’t the paper, but was instead my memory – or lack thereof.

One other thing that I do on Friday night’s is text scoring updates back to bladenonline to be posted on Twitter. Usually no problem, but on this particular night, my wife and four daughters plus a friend of theirs had included me on one of their text threads and that thing ‘blew up’ during the second quarter of the East Bladen game.

At one time between the six of them, I had over 100 unread messages on that thread, and they kept coming … and coming. I think the final total just during the ball game was roughly 230 messages on that thread.

At the same time the Eagles were exploding for 34 second-quarter points, so the notes and texts were coming fast and furious.

Imagine one old school reporter, trying to do a play-by-play on the back of an ATM receipt, while at the same time his phone is constantly dinging with texts (No I don’t have the phone that you can set to ‘Do Not Disturb’). Plus the touchdowns were coming ‘Fast and Furious’ so I was also trying to send texts out to get them on Twitter.

Needless to say it was a second quarter of high stress and high activity, and the final 2 touchdowns of the half were delayed to halftime for Twitter publication.

After a trip to the parking lot during halftime – my folded up wad of paper was resting comfortably in the passenger seat – the second half was not nearly as stressful. Plus a continuously running clock due to the ‘mercy rule’ shortened it considerably.

The one big fear remaining was that I would lose that little ATM receipt before I gleaned all the information from the notes on it.

So last week we had a video of the West Bladen at West Columbus game available on our website. This week a scrap of paper 3 inches by 4.5 inches proved to be vital in supplying our readers with the best coverage of Bladen County High School Football – isn’t technology grand. (Picture of the notes is attached)

Key learnings from Friday night:
1.    Check your car seat and your back pockets repeatedly in the parking lot for an inventory of needed supplies before entering the game.
2.    Investigate ‘Do Not Disturb’ software.
3.    Maybe an ‘Old Dog Needs to Learn New Tricks.’  Or at least get a better memory.

Share on social media using short code: https://bladencounty.org/?p=24834

About Author