The guys had a 8am Saturday morning practice last weekend, a 8:30am one today and another one is set for next weekend. As much as I like sleeping in on the weekend (and I do love sleeping in) I wanted to get out to at least one of these practices.
During practice Chris Hunt had asked me what it was like to photograph with the sun low in the horizon. I said it was much better than photographing at noon when the light was directly above. The main reason I came at 8:30 am was not for the novelty of doing a morning practice, but because I knew the light would be too good to pass up. When one photographs a game at 1pm, a standard start time for many games, the high sun casts shadows from the helmet onto the faces of the players. So the face of the player can be blacked out (unless it is an overcast day). But with a lower sun the light is cast more in their face, so you can see the faces clearly — making the early wake-up call worth it. (Although at 7 when my alarm went off, my body tried hard to talk me out of coming).
The last practice I was at there were no numbers on the jerseys. I made a comment to one of the coaches that I found it amazing that they can recognize all the players, especially the freshman, with no help from numbers. I later found out that they were not given numbered jerseys because the coaches wanted to assess the players’ skill without being biased. With no numbers, even they had a hard time picking out players so there were no favorites to pick. Everyone started equally and everyone had a chance to impress, from the freshmen to the seniors.
With the initial assessment now done, the players now are wearing their numbered warm-ups. During practice the team had a “blue white” scrimmage.
