first time at track ...

Today was a first for me, as I've never had the chance to shoot a high school track meet before. I've seen plenty of track images out there (some good, some really bad) but I've not made any myself, so I was pretty excited to finally get out there (I was also really disappointed when I asked the coach when the pole vault would happen and he said they would not have that event today). 

I shot several series of hurdles and the 100 meter dash before I realized the record keeping was so bad and I could only salvage the names for one of my photos. I finally made may way over to the high jump and started shooting away

as all these 6 foot tall kids were jumping over a 4 foot beam. I doubt I could do it myself, but they made it look easy, which I suppose it is to an

yone in any kind of shape. Then this little guy comes walking up ... I'm a bad judge at height, but I would say he was about 5'5" or so ... and he is clearly out performing the other student athletes.

Being a first-time track shooter and a sucker for 

clean backgrounds, I forgot about all

 the other messy background events and focused on this kid (his name was Josh Black). I knew the 

paper would only run one, but I was just playing at this point. 

The coaches keep raising the bar, and slowly all the other kids start dropping out. Finally they get the bar to 5'10" and Josh can still clear it. This may be pretty standard for the high jump, but I was impressed. 

Josh's downfall came with the bar at 6 feet high. He tried three times, and cleared it except for his feet, which kept catching the bar. 

So there's my first adventures in track and field. It was a beautiful day (the first really warm one here in a while) and I'm going to bug sports tomorrow to assign the next event, whenever it is.