Sometimes even the best plans don’t follow the script. My 10 years as a sports reporter in St. Helena and Calistoga, two communities in the Northern part of Napa Valley, CA, of about 4,000-5,000 population, often involved a lot of creative planning, especially on football Friday nights.
First some primer for the paint. The St. Helena Star and Weekly Calistogan are two community weekly publications owned by the Napa Valley Register, which is a daily publication. When the staff was bigger, I could generally ask to farm out help to cover one Upvalley football game while I covered the other. However, as the staff continued to get small (a growing trend in the industry), I did not have that luxury.
As a result, I would cover one game in person and receive text message updates on the other in the interest of getting in two stories of substance on deadline for the Register but later adding to it for the weekly publications. On the St. Helena side, I was blessed to have Garrett Whitt to help me fill gaps while I covered Calistoga solo. Whitt, who I refer to as “The G-Man,” has had cerebral paulsy since birth which means he has limitations as far as needing more time to write stories but in a weekly newspaper format that’s a non-issue. What I will always love about the GMan is that he has the best interest of the community in mind. That is one of many reasons I consider him a friend.
Anyhow, back to the deadline hot mess I dealt with just under three years ago. I don’t tell this story to request sympathy. I was in this industry long enough to know the perils of deadline story filing. However, if this story entertains you and you read to the end, then I’ve done my job.
This is a story that had me uttering more four-letter bombs known to man but I laugh today.
Just to set the scene, it was my belief that both Upvalley high school football teams are going to have very good seasons in 2013. I was right. St. Helena went 9-3. Calistoga went 8-2.
Nothing that took place on the field that night was enough to change my mind as St. Helena blanked Tomales 20-0 on the road and Calistoga pulled away for a 42-13 win at Cloverdale.
That said, my biggest challenge is balancing my presence evenly for both teams throughout the season. Some weeks, it is a non-issue; there are bye weeks and Saturday games. In the latter scenario, both teams play on opposite days so I need no strategic planning.
So I went to the St. Helena-Tomales game in person and was going to rely on text message scoring updates from the Calistoga-Cloverdale game as I attempted to file two stories on deadline with our parent publication, the Napa Valley Register. There were weeks the opposite will be true.
That proposition would qualify as risky considering high school football games end at 10 p.m. in a best-case scenario, and stories need to be filed at or near 11 p.m.
Throw in the fact that coaches give their postgame talk to players for a few minutes, as a reporter I spend a few minutes interviewing the coach, and it takes a few minutes to walk to your car and drive to a location to file your story. Once you are there, you tally up your stats, sift through your notes and if you use a recorder, transcribe quotes to complete your story.
My plan was to go to Tomales, where AT&T subscribers like myself get no cell phone reception. So I filed most of my St. Helena story from the press box in Tomales, and interviewed Saints head coach Brandon Farrell for a few minutes after he addressed his team. Then when I got into cell phone range, I could sift through my text message updates from the Calistoga game and get enough of a story on both teams.
I hustled out to my car where the clock read 10:20 — the game starting at 8 p.m. did me no favors — but luckily both teams called for a lot of running plays, which led to minimal clock stoppages. However, it would take a minimum of 15 minutes just to get to cell phone reception range but I was still confident enough to beat the clock.
However, two more obstacles hit. I turn right after halting at the Tomales-Petaluma Road on to Bodega Avenue. I hit the accelerator hard. My speedometer hits 40 mph and counting. The speed limit is 50 mph on the two-lane highway. I spot a sheriff on a street corner so I take my foot off the accelerator to slow my vehicle down naturally.
I look in my rearview mirror and the sheriff pulls behind the car trailing me. I’m thinking, “Not me.” After about a mile, I look in my rear view mirror and the sheriff makes a left turn. I exhale a sigh of relief.
One more problem ensued; I was stuck behind a truck pulling a horse trailer until I reached Petaluma.
I pull into Petaluma and found a picnic table outside of Whole Foods Market.
Good thing I’m not in South Chicago. It’s 10:43 p.m. I get the laptop logged in by 10:47 p.m. I finish my St. Helena story at 10:50 p.m.
I sift through my Calistoga text messages — not all came through but I got enough to give the Register the final score and a few of the touchdowns.
So 10:56 is on the clock, only to have my computer freeze. I was not happy. If a camera was on me, the words “bleep, bleep, bleep” would have been involved.
So I reboot the computer, hoping that my “saved” work that was not yet completed would be saved.
Both stories are literally “bare bones” in length but I didn’t care since I have weekly publications. The clock reads 10:59 p.m. when I dialed up the Internet.
I did the quickest “copy and paste” twice and had both stories emailed as the clock struck 11 p.m.
Well, all I can say is, that night was a wild ride.
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