I almost did not go today but decided at the last moment to come out to practice. I’m glad I did or would have otherwise missed a lot of great stuff. When I first arrived at Kenan Stadium, coach Lattimore was writing the following message on the dry erase board:
Upperclassmen do not touch freshman’s stuff!!
Freshmen take care of your stuff. Do not lose, you’ll need them.
The freshmen today were getting their new gear for the upcoming season. New gloves and a new rolling suitcase. And the upperclassmen did come over to check out the new gear. Coach Lattimore helped the frosh with writing their numbers on their new gear with a Sharpie.
The team then headed to the weight room which is just adjacent to the locker room in the field house at Kenan Stadium. Lighting in there was pretty terrible; worse than the Ernie Smith Field House. It was complicated by the nature of the lighting which was very uneven. The inconsistency in light finally led me to putting my camera on “auto” for the exposure. That’s rare for me to do; I’m compulsive about only using my camera in manual mode but the spotty light made that infeasible. Using auto exposure worked for the most part, except I lost an entire sequence of photos of Jack Ryan because behind him were bright lights — an obvious failure mode for auto exposure that I forgot about.
I am continuously amazed by the strength and conditioning staff and the methods for training they come up with. While the general public is surrounded by advertisements of expensive home workout systems like Soloflex and others, the training staff can work out every single muscle in your body with nothing but a wooden box to work with.
During the workout session Chris Madalon said he and his roommates were having a cookout later in the night and were going to watch the NFL’s first game of the season featuring the Saints at Indianapolis. I said to of course count me in.
Some last minute news on the family front almost kept me from going to their house. My dad called around 6pm to say that mom was experiencing pains around the chest and was going to the ER. But mom said she thought she was okay and not to worry. So I went to the player’s house but my mom was front on my mind. She called later to let me know everything was okay and it was not the onset of a myocardial infarction as we worried about.
Chris Madalon, Sean Jackson, Sean Delaney, Hunter Meldman, Ian Morrison and Colin Sherwood all live in this house not far from campus. They put their funds together to buy some burgers, hot dogs and other side dishes. Colin did all the cooking, cooking under no light except the headlights of one the cars they turned out so they could see the grill outside. Food looked actually pretty good and they offered me some. But I ate before coming sense I didn’t want to eat the food they bought.
Funniest moment of the night came with our struggle with a can opener as we tried to open a can of beans. I was getting a good laugh as they tried to use a can opener to no avail. I stopped laughing when I also couldn’t figure it out. The night ended with no one ever able to figure out how to use this can opener. Someone was able to find an “old school” can opener thankfully; otherwise that can of beans would still not be open.
I stayed at their house until the game ended. At half time I got some shots of them playing the xbox. All in all, it was a great day for photos. I had a great time at their place and it was worth every minute.
In the weightroom…
At the player’s house…
