Great to watch/play, awful to cover

Volleyball is O.K. if it goes three games. If it goes five, I'm falling asleep.

 

Third vote here. I mean, give me Serena calling her opponent a cheater, and that's one thing. But the tennis I had to cover ... I struggled.

 

I'm guessing photographers will have the exact opposite answers as the writers.

 

Who the hell slides in swimming? Our photogs are worthless.

 

I've written about and took photos at most of the prep sports mentioned here.

Track and field meets are great to shoot and almost always have a great story or three to tell.

Swimming/diving: Brutal to shoot, not much better to cover. When they're swimming, you just don't see much of the athlete other than arms and feet. Plus the humidity and splashing is hell on camera gear.

Actually, baseball and softball can be tricky to shoot, too -- especially low-scoring games. There's only so many shots of pitchers or plays at second base you can take before you (and the readers) get bored of 'em.

When I lived in northern Michigan, hockey was actually one of my favorite sports to cover (and I never really played it myself). And I also like covering wrestling -- provided you're not stuck all day at some 800-team invite with loads and loads of agate to type. A closely-contested dual meet is good stuff.

 

Photogs have told me they hate swim meets because the moisture in the natatoriums are not good for the cameras.

 

Sirs, Madames,

Curling. I've covered it and didn't have the faintest clue what was going on.

o-<

 

Exactly. Particularly high school wrestling when you're trying to cover the whole "event." Obviously you can find one match that had the most significance or was most exciting, but then how do you describe it? Perhaps another thread (and maybe it already exists) should be to write sports gamers as Danielle Steele romance scenes. I'd say wrestling would make a good one.

 

Tennis really isn't bad if you understand the game and the scoring. And all the players and coaches I've interviewed were very polite. Sometimes coaches would sit next to you during the match and talk strategy.

Of the high school sports, track was the worst because there are just so many events and inevitably you will leave out someone who did something (unless your story is 45 inches) and someone will bitch that "you're costing my kid a scholarship".

 

Car racing. The only good seat in the house is behind the wheel. Amazing how a sport can generate so much adrenalin when you're the one doing it, yet put you to sleep so fast when you're on the sidelines.

Most of the drivers I've met were not good interviews and if you weren't mechanically inclined you would lose what they were talking about. "We blew a (insert name of gadget) on lap 43 and the suspension was a little tight... yada, yada, yada."

Second pick: Horse racing. The horses never are good quotes.

 

Cross country is great to watch?

And I have no problem covering tennis.

I don't think I can honestly think of a sport that fits both qualifications, great to watch/awful to cover. I guess if I had to it would be hockey, but only because I don't know much about the game.

 

Back when I used to shoot sports for TV the one I absolutely hated was softball, at least if a decent pitcher was involved. Typically I would try to get at least one highlight for each team, particularly in a high school game. Some days I'd burn 10 minutes of tape before anyone made contact with the ball. And the "chatter" would make me want to kill something.