Mea Culpa. n. (may-uh kul-puh)
An acknowledgment of a personal error or fault.
Greg Mattura, a fine local sports writer I work with at The Record, who covers the high school volleyball beat -among other things. This week he wrote a feature piece about the Libero, whose top statistic is the "Dig." The libero is a player specialized in defensive skills: the libero must wear a contrasting jersey color from his or her teammates and cannot block or attack the ball when it is entirely above net height.
In other words, they do the hard grunt work for their teams.
So Greg set up a photo assignment for me to photograph four top Bergen County libero's at the construction site at Paramus High School. With permission from the school and the girls coaches, he was going to bring four shovels for the girls to "dig" volleyballs amongst the construction equipment. The photo was to accompany his story.
He thought it was a great idea. I thought it was over-the-top.
Although the idea was creative, I thought it corny. I called him... Greg, I love you man, but this is stupid... He calmly let me vent, then informed me that I was overly negative, and that I should just show up and produce a wonderful photo -as usual.
For those who don't know Greg -he is a mensch, and one of my all-time favorite colleagues to work with. He is a superb reporter; diligent, caring, extremely hard working, dedicated, and is a real good guy. He and I have collaborated countless times, usually while covering golf which his main beat, and a passion of mine. One of the nice things about covering golf with Greg is that we get to razz and needle each other on the course in between shots. Once we put our heads together to make a quirky portrait photo of a golfer who scored a hole in one -taken from "inside the cup." It won some award, I don't remember which.
I've covered a lot of local sports in my 20 years. I've seen how the intensity and pressure of youth sports has been increasingly ratcheted-up over the years. It's particularly evident in girls sports, where the level of play has improved by a great measure -in my estimation. I just think we in the local media sometimes try too hard to make these high school athletes into stars and local celebrities, I think it at times it borders on sensational and gratuitous.
What exactly are we saying to readers here with this photo?
What is the meaning?
As it turned out, the kids were great. IHA's Stephanie Cruz, Paramus' Vanessa Sullivan, RiverDell's Kiara Besonia, and Bogota's Ashley Ramirez. Greg's idea turned out better than I expected, much better, and I concede that I was overly negative. It was creative and a good attempt, on Greg's part and the part of the coaches here, to make something mundane into something good. I respect that and appreciate his effort. And the girls were great sports.
Perhaps I was being overly negative.
I liked the shot, I may put it in my portfolio.... Thanks Greg!
Out-takes...
Diggers
