Sports Can Be Challenging

I have the honor and the privilege of getting to be the stadium announcer for my sons’ high school lacrosse teams. It’s a lot of fun, and I get the best seat in the house up in the press box, but it also comes with some challenges.

The first challenge comes from my wife, who has never been a stadium announcer and therefore doesn’t believe that I need to be at the field an hour before the first game starts. I think her objection is that I should still be working and making money, but I think we can all agree, that’s not as fun as being at the field.

Pronunciations are one of my biggest challenges, which makes sense based on our last name. I don’t come across too many atrocities like “Schmatjen” on other teams, but every squad has its tough names, and if that kid scores a goal or does something cool, I want Pronav Fananaziria or Stephan Koch to hear their name pronounced correctly.

(That’s one of the things I’m doing an hour before the game starts, and it is a tad dismaying how many coaches don’t know how to pronounce their own players’ last names. If you coach, please be better than that!)

Another challenge arises with the music. I get to be in charge of what music gets played, which is like a dream come true, because I think I was really supposed to be a radio DJ, but accidentally ended up in engineering somehow. Issues arise in two main areas with the music.

First, I have to deal with some of the players who try to have an opinion about the music. I tell them two things: A) Your music is about 95% terrible, and B) the music I play is for the people in the stands who are paying for all of this. You just concentrate on not sucking out there on the field, OK?

The second issue I have with the music is finding songs that aren’t about sex, drugs, and/or have more than one cuss word that I can bleep out with my cool music software. Now don’t get me wrong, I like a lot of the songs I’d never play at a lacrosse game, but I am of the opinion that if an adult is playing music at a school event, that music should be clean. It is surprising and worrisome, when we travel to other schools, how many adults don’t subscribe to that same opinion.

Multi-tasking is one of my biggest challenges, because I am in charge of the scoreboard, the game clock, the music, and announcing who did what. That can present problems, because I am a man and therefore my brain is only capable of doing one thing at a time.

I have found that coaches and refs have a low tolerance for the game clock not starting and stopping correctly on each and every whistle. They also frown upon Taylor Swift continuing to sing “Shake it Off” after the game has restarted, which is a no-no.

I’ve also found parents tend to have an almost zero tolerance level of their son’s goal not being recorded on the big scoreboard within milliseconds after it has occurred.

Speaking of parents in the stands – they account for my biggest challenge of all. Specifically, the problem involving me not being able to move the press box. It’s a three-room building, bolted down to the top of the stadium. I can’t make it budge.

In lacrosse, we all sit on the same side of the field, in what is known as the “home side” by all the adorable football parents who can’t fathom having to ever be near a parent from the opposing team. The idea, which is a smart one, is to keep the players on the opposite side of the field from their parents. That way, the players will get directions from their coaches who understand the game, instead of from their parents, who do not.

Roughly 85% of youth lacrosse parents don’t agree with the coaches’ decisions or the refs’ calls, but to be fair, those parents don’t understand the rules of lacrosse. That’s because it’s a fast and confusing sport. One would hope that they would recognize their lack of understanding and either learn more or be quiet, but that doesn’t seem to happen very often.

Now, if you are in the stands and an obnoxious parent happens to sit down next to you, you are able to move away from them. I don’t have that option up in the box. And, to my great dismay, directly under my open press box window seems to be the preferred spot for obnoxious parents. I don’t know why. I’m just lucky, I guess.

I hear all the usual things you’re expect, like aggressively disagreeing with blatantly correct penalty calls, and instructions to players that make no sense in any sport, let alone lacrosse. But last night, I heard something new.

We had our first game of the section championship rounds last night, and two parents from the opposing team were sitting in the coveted obnoxious zone under my window. Our lacrosse games are twelve-minute quarters, and I’m not lying when I tell you that the mom never once stopped yelling something toward the field for the full forty-eight minutes of regulation, not even counting time outs. She got full credit for stamina.

She hit all the usual highlights, but at one point in the second quarter she brought the awesome. Apparently fresh out of non-helpful technical directions or call disagreements, she briefly switched to nutrition and sports med.

From the top of the stands, in the middle of the action, seventy-five yards away from the players’ sideline on the other side of the field, she busted out, “Hydrate! You guys need to hydrate! Come on! Drink some water!”

I’m not making that up.

Some nights are more entertaining than others.

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2024 Marc Schmatjen

 

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Now Accepting Network Offers

I was lucky enough to be asked last year to help with the public address announcing at our high school lacrosse games. Son Number Two was a freshman on the team last spring, and since I know virtually nothing about lacrosse, I immediately agreed to help.

This was back when healthy, mask-wearing kids were being quarantined from school and sports for two weeks at a time because someone in their class may or may not have had COVID symptoms. It’s fine. I’m over it, mostly.

One of our good friends on the team was forced to hang out on his couch while perfectly healthy and miss the game.

I was in the booth when I got a text from them at home saying they could hear me. My immediate response was, wow, I must have this microphone turned up waaay too loud, because your house is like three or four miles from here.

No, they told me, not on the P.A. system. They were watching the game on something called the NFHS Network. Come to find out, the National Federation of State High School Associations has a network where member schools can provide a camera feed so that subscribers can watch the games – usually with no sound.

I had the windows open on the front of the stadium press box so that I could see, and the NFHS Network cameras turned out to be mounted right above my head on the front of the building. They apparently had microphones that were picking up my voice, ever so faintly, from inside the booth, when I wasn’t talking on the P.A. system.

Since I am always the consummate professional, I only had a minor heart attack about what I might have unknowingly said. Our friends assured me that I was OK, then informed me that there were two cameras, one for each side of the field, and the scoreboard side camera was not working. So, they were only seeing half the action and didn’t know the score or the time.

They asked me to please speak up about four or five notches and provide a running play-by-play for that side of the field. I was happy to do so, which most certainly annoyed anyone sitting in the bleachers directly below my booth, but I didn’t care because they were mostly the visitors’ fans anyway.

When I got home that night, I looked up the NFHS Network website to see how the whole thing worked, and made a startling discovery. In small print at the bottom of the website it read, “NFHS Network is part of the CBS Digital Network.”

Yes, that’s right. For about seventy-five minutes on a glorious spring evening last year, I was a national sports play-by-play announcer for CBS.

I had no idea.

We are back in business this spring with a full team on the field, and I am announcing a game tonight. But make no mistake, CBS, I will not be providing any free play-by-play to the cameras above my head this time without a substantial contract offer from you.

I’m serious, fellas. No free rides. That offer needs to have at least one or two zeros behind it. Let’s make it happen.

And look, I know you obviously want more of the microphone magic, but I understand how things are going these days, I really do. Not to show my cards too early in the negotiations, but if things are tight over there at the network right now, I would be willing to talk about accepting some sort of snack bar voucher in lieu of a salary.

Seriously, call me.

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2022 Marc Schmatjen

 

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Lacrosse

I registered Son Number Two for lacrosse yesterday. It wasn’t easy.

I mean, the website and registration process and everything was fine. That’s not what I meant. It wasn’t easy getting to this point. You know, because of baseball. Allow me to explain.

You see, lacrosse seems to be a spring sport, which conflicts with the standard springtime baseball season. Everyone knows baseball is America’s game, so I wasn’t really sure what Son Number Two even meant when he said he wanted to play something called lacrosse during baseball season.

He said something about baseball not being fast enough. I told him it speeds up tremendously when you misread a routine fly ball with runners in scoring position. He just rolled his eyes. Then he said something about baseball not having enough action. I told him nothing has more action than an 0-2 curve ball with two outs and the bases empty, but he just looked at me funny.

After many confusing conversations, it finally became clear that he wished to actually not play baseball in the spring and play lacrosse instead. I rushed him to the pediatrician, and explained the situation, but the lady at the front desk was as confused as I was, and kept repeating some nonsense about how kids wanting to choose a new sport was natural.

I kept repeating the whole no baseball part to her, but she just wasn’t getting it. Finally, the doctor came out, shined a light in his eyes, told me his brain was working fine, and made us go home.

We need a new pediatrician.

Exasperated, I told my wife all about what our middle son was suggesting and what the whackadoos at the doctor’s office said.

That’s when I found out she’s also crazy.

Now, finding a new doctor is one thing, but finding a new wife and kids seems a bit extreme, so I was forced to begin to wrap my head around this whole no baseball thing and start to consider lacrosse instead.

Being from the west coast, I had never even heard of lacrosse until my son brought it up. It turns out quite a few kids already play it, but they all seem to live on the east coast. Further research showed some east coast high schools and colleges even offer lacrosse, I assume as an elective.

Reluctantly, I purchased a lacrosse stick for him. If you’re from the west coast like me, I’ll describe it for you. It’s a four-foot-long metal stick with a plastic hoop on top, about the size and shape of a parking meter. The hoop is strung with what appear to be shoelaces, to form a net, and apparently, it’s really cool to leave a bunch of the shoelaces longer than they needed to be so they hang down off the back, like Predator’s dreadlocks.

The stick looks like a fantastic device to catch crawdads with, but when I tried to catch and throw a ball with it, it was totally useless. You know what’s good for catching a ball? A baseball glove. And for throwing a ball? Your arm.

Anyway, off we went, useless Predator stick in hand, to the free clinic put on by the local lacrosse club. Much to my amazement, there were some high school kids there who could actually throw and catch a ball with their lacrosse sticks. And they appeared to be from the west coast. They could even run with the stick straight up, keeping the basket over their heads, and the ball stayed in the shoelace net, which was also impossible at my house.

Then the coaches picked up sticks and started throwing and catching. Holy cow! They could throw the ball approximately seven hundred miles per hour and hit very small targets accurately from many yards away. I was dumbfounded.

As I sat on the sidelines, mesmerized by how one coach picked up a ball off the ground by somehow just slapping it with his stick, the league president started showing us the standard boys’ lacrosse equipment.

Shoulder pads, elbow pads, big protective gloves, and a very serious-looking helmet.

Wait a second... you mean to tell me this is going to be a bunch of boys racing around the field banging into one another and hitting each other with the sticks?

Where do I sign him up?

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2018 Marc Schmatjen

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