This Friday and Saturday I covered two CIF final football games, one was between two schools in my area. The other was a local school against a school from out of the area. The first game was between Vista Murrieta and Chaparral, I have covered both of these schools regularly in the past four years and have become very familiar with the players on both teams. So it was really neat to get to see them play each other for the title match.
I covered the Vista Murrieta side of the game and another photographer covered the Chaparral side, to make sure we got the reactions from the winners and the losers at the end of the game. It rained off and on during the game but for the most part it stayed pretty dry, but it did get a little foggy which kinda made it a bit moody. The Chaparral team endded up winning so I had the job of photographing the sad faces of Vista Murrieta, which I never love to do, I mean these kids worked so hard to get this far and I really feel bad for them not winning, but I guess they can't all win.
The following night I covered Linfield Christian a local school play Rio Hondo in Covina. I knew this game was going to be a wet one do to the fact that we had a big winter storm roll through the night of the game. By the time I got to the field there was probably a good inch of water on the it already and the rain didn't seem to show any sign of stopping.
After being on the sidelines for about ten minutes my pants were completely soaked and I was very glad I remembered to bring my water proof jacket. My biggest problem was my cameras, I had made some waterproof coverings for them with plastic bags but the eyepiece on my main camera kept fogging up and by the end of the first quarter it was useless. So I just had to shoot the action by feel, which might sound very zen but when your soaking wet, covered in mud, and freezing cold its very hard to even come close to anything zen like.
The action in the game was great but the fact that Linfield won was even better because I got to photograph the celebrations after the win. And if I thought I was muddy before the end of the game I got a huge surprise because the guys hit the field like it was a mud covered slip-and-slide and then came the apple cider. It was a great time and a great game to cover. To view more images from both the games go to this link http://www.photoshelter.com/c/andrewfoulk/gallery/CIF-Football/G0000Y.KMlokS8Cs/
