The one thing I have learned over my first five days on the sports beat is that no really cares about start times. I have showed up each day for games that we published in our newspaper's schedule as starting at 4:30 p.m. Each time, I showed up about 15 minutes early to discover both teams there, coaches, referees, cheerleaders, the whole shebang.
So when are we going to start the game?
Once again, I'm reminded of Island Life. For the last five days, I've documented the actual start times and the average margin of tardiness is about 50 minutes. I'm not joking. And at the same time, no one inside the gym really cares.
Some sports are just completely backwards here. For example, they have a decent facility for the baseball little league teams and behind the right-field fence, they have two really nice batting cages with mechanical pitching machines in it. Yet, half the kids who took grounders in the outfield did not have gloves and were going at it with bare hands.
This particular team I took pictures of had two female coaches and zero female players. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I love women. I just thought it was a little odd.To top it off, I drove to another field less than a mile away and caught an actual game. The stands were packed. There were more spectators at this little league baseball game than the varsity basketball game I covered the day before.
Two parents got into a hysterical screaming match after the game. It was so ridiculous that the losing coach got involved and didn't want to be interviewed because he was too ticked off. The young players gathered afterward and watched the tempers of their elders reach new levels.
I later found out the debate was over good sportsmanship and what is actually considered positive reinforcement for the players.
Go figure.
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