When I first started this job, I thought every single game was important and they all needed to covered and reported on — my personal life be damned.
But my viewpoint has evolved over the years. I still respect the job and the role high school sports plays in a community, and for the most part, I still look my particular line of work like that of a teacher: I spend nine months at school and then get summers “off.” That’s when I usually try to schedule vacations and time away from the office.
But when my wife and I got married 27 years ago in the first weekend of November 1998, the Central Coast Section playoff schedule was not even a twinkle in my eye. I wasn’t even working for the Daily Journal then and even when I did get to the Peninsula in the spring of 2001, my anniversary seldom interfered with anything other than regular-season games.
But as the seasons have gone longer with expanded playoffs, the time to actually play all these games have shrunk. First, it was football that pushed the start of the season to August, instead of September. It used to be I’d have to sacrifice covering a rivalry game on a Saturday, and I did that for many years, hustling home after the Little Big Game (usually) and then going out to celebrate our anniversary.
As we got further into our marriage, we started making bigger plans, going away for a long weekend. But now volleyball was starting earlier in the year. So now on a Saturday I might miss a rivalry game and the start of the volleyball playoffs.
Not enough to make me feel bad about skipping it.
This year, however, hoo boy, I left Daily Journal sports reporter Terry Bernal in the lurch. My wife had planned a whole four-day weekend this month and kept the particulars a surprise until a few weeks ago.
It was at that point that I realized that this past Saturday was the busiest weekend of the school year. I won’t even say “thus far” because I don’t think there will be any weekend the rest of the year that will be as busy as this past weekend was.
In addition to the end of the regular season football schedule, which featured a handful of rivalry games, Saturday also marked the CCS volleyball and flag football championship matches, of which there were seven teams from San Mateo County playing for titles, along with the start of the CCS water polo tournament brackets.
Additionally, the Northern California regional girls’ golf tournament and the start of the CCS girls’ tennis tournament started Monday and I was still out of the office.
Basically, this is a big thank you to Bernal for holding down the fort while I was gone. I don’t know if you saw Monday’s issue, but he had eight bylines, wrote two staff reports and one football roundup package.
I’ve already told my wife that next year we have to plan any future trips the week before or the week after our actual anniversary, because this year I did feel bad for leaving all that work for one person.
***
So the YouTube TV and Disney/ABC/ESPN impasse has gone on for a couple weeks now and as a YTTV subscriber, I can actually say I don’t really miss any of the programming that billionaires and trillionaires are fighting over.
Because I no longer consume sports the way I used to. I no longer spend all weekend on the couch watching games. The big college games on Saturdays don’t interest me anymore and unless the 49ers are playing on Monday Night Football or the Golden State Warriors are playing on ABC or ESPN, I simply no longer care.
I know the 49ers are scheduled for a Monday night game coming up here and maybe then I’ll get mad. But as of now, it is a case of out of sight, out of mind.
Nathan Mollat has been covering high school sports in San Mateo County for the San Mateo Daily Journal. since 2001. He can be reached by email: nathan@smdailyjournal.com.
Sports Editor
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