July 30, 2007 Update continued...

I've always wanted to cover a rodeo, but never had the chance, until this past Saturday. I noticed a listing for a rodeo put on by the Hawaii Women's Rodeo Association at the DK Ranch in Waimonalo. It was as much fun as I thought it would be and I hope to do more rodeos in the future. The women have a very nice website with lots of information, but I haven't found anything on the men's side. Please send me information if you have it. The photo galleries can be found here. Here's a few photos from the barrel racing competion.






















It was then over to the CORP pool to cover the Aloha State Games swim meet. This meet really grew over last year's. A few photos from the meet follow. To reach the full gallery, please click
here.

July 30, 2007 Update

The last 2 weeks have been different from my usual hectic pace. I still covered quite a few events, though, and had a lot of fun doing them.

First, it was the Hawaii International Cup Soccer tournament held at Waipio, sponsored by the Honolulu Bulls. The photo galleries can be found here. The tournament ran from a Thursday through Sunday. We were there Thursday, Friday and Sunday.

On Saturday, the summer track Relay Championships were held at Punahou School. It rained constantly. The kids didn't seem to mind the rain that much, but I did. Ugh... The track and field galleries for the whole summer can be found here.

The next week, it was the Aloha International Cup Soccer Tournament. This is another big soocer tournament held at Waipio, this time sponsored by Leahi. Photo galleries can be reached through this link.



Again, we couldn't stay the whole time at the soccer tournament because of another track meet, this time the Aloha State Games Track and Field Meet.


One thing that is really nice about the Aloha State Games track meet is there are some events that we don't see very often, namely javelin and hammer throw. I only get to see the javelin a few times a year, during the girls' heptathlon and the boys' decathlon, in addition to the Aloha State Games. But, the hammer throw has only been once a year, at this meet. Here's a photo of one of our few hammer throwers.

2007 Hawaii International Cup Soccer

This summer has been quite varied so far. Some Iolani baseball, some Iolani basketball (boys and girls), a lot of USATF summer track meets, the Aloha State Games diving meet, the Keo Nakama swim meet, and the just completed Hawaii International Cup Soccer Tournament.

The HIC games either myself or my assistant covered were:

Thursday:

U11 Girls Bulls Red vs Ka-oi Cobras
U17 Girls Abbotsford Hurricanes vs Skovlunde IF
U19 Girls Bulls vs Ka'oi Laulina
U12 Boys Black vs Kona Heat
U12 Girls Ha'aheo vs Real Hawaii

Friday:

U12 Boys Bulls Black vs Bulls White
U12 Girls So Cal Blues vs Ha'aheo
U14 Boys Honolulu Bulls vs Hawaii Rush B94 Nike
U11 Girls Honolulu Bulls Red vs Hawaii Rush
U17 Girls Abbotsford Hurricanes vs Real Hawaii

Sunday:

U16 Boys Bulls Red vs LJSA
U11 Girls Bulls Red vs Real Hawaii
U14 Boys Motiv-8 vs Hawaii Rush B94 Nike

On Saturday, we covered the USATF Relay Championships in Track and Field.

I will probably be covering some Aloha Cup soccer games. If you have interest in me covering your team, please email me.

All photos can be reached from my smugmug galleries. Please email me if you have any questions about my photos, collages or posters, or anything else about my business.

So, where have you been?

Hi all,

I know I've been terribly negligent in posting to this blog. Hey, it's not like I've been lazy! But, yeah, I know there are a lot of you that want me to keep the blog up-to-date, and I really would like to also.

Doing the State Championships was really fun, but I really got tired by the end. I looked at the Track and Field Championships as the biggest event of the year for me and, ugh, I got sick. It might not have been so hard except that I had just done a bunch of State Championships right before it, girls basketball, baseball and girls water polo! I felt it coming as I stepped off the plane in Maui. I still enjoyed the meet tremendously, but it would have been much nicer doing it healthy.

Then I had so many orders for collages and posters to complete that I've been working straight out (with my daughter) to complete them all. The backlog is almost whittled down now, enough so I felt I could write a bit on the blog.

I've had quite a few requests to give my predictions for the top 20 in cross-country this year. I don't really know the boys well enough, and in most cases, I feel I know the girls too well, at least a bunch of them. I'm just not unbiased enough to do it and I'm in trouble no matter what I do. The Iolani team potentially has quite a few girls that will be top 20 this year. I just can't rate them. If I rate them high, everyone says I'm just biased. If I rate them low then they might be upset with me. So, I'm going to take the coward's way out and say, you want a top 20 list? Either send it to me in an email and I'll collate it with everyone else's or you can just post it on this blog. It must be reasonable, though, or I will ignore it.

I just added a new page to the USATF website displaying the home page photos from the summer track meets. I will continue this practice into the future. I may even go back to last year's meets, but I'm not promising anything.

One other thing, I get quite a few comments on what I do. Almost everyone of them is complimentary. I did get one a few weeks ago from an anonymous emailer (he/she used one of those websites that allow you to send an anonymous email) who felt I didn't give Punahou enough photographic space on the State Championship Track and Field pages. Since I couldn't answer the email because this person didn't have enough guts to sign his name, I'll answer it here. I cover Punahou all through the ILH season. They are the largest team we compete against and I think you'll find that if you go through my USATF website there are many more Punahou athletes than any other team, probably more than every other team combined, for that matter. Going to States finally gave me a good chance to see the athletes from the outer islands and other leagues. So, I tried to feature the athletes that I don't see every week.

In the future, I won't even acknowledge emails where the writer won't sign their name.

That's all for now.

Al

Huh? You crazy?

Sorry I haven't updated the blog for a while. "Busy" is a huge understatement and there are just so many hours in the day. Besides the time you see me at events taking pictures, you may not realize that processing those photos takes more time than the actual photography. Then there are all the websites that depend on my photography:

www.sportshigh.com www.hi50sports.com www.usatf-hi.org www.iolani-events.org www.iolani.org

When I'm done with all that, I work on collages and posters. That backlog is pretty large right now, but as they say, that's a lot better than the alternative.

So, to answer all of you that are asking me why I did not cover the hugely important Varsity Girls Basketball game last night against Kamehameha, here goes:

First of all, I desperately wanted to see that game. It's no secret that I have favorite teams. I'm not only a photographer, I'm a fan. And this varsity team has captured my heart. It's not the first team that has done that, and it won't be the last, but I really enjoy watching this team play. Anyway, I (like everyone else) didn't know about this game until 2 days before. I already had other games that I had planned to cover during that time. Combine that with the fact that St. Louis' lighting is, well, awful. Also, I knew that win or lose, this varsity team was going to continue playing, either at the ILH tournament or at States or both, but I knew this wasn't their last game.

The 2 games I covered were the Intermediate 1 game and the JV game, both against MPI. Both those games were the last games I could cover for those teams.

So, it came down to going to the game at St. Louis as a fan (the lighting is so terrible that I figured my photos wouldn't be up to my standards, so why even try?) or cover 2 teams that were finishing their season and have been very supportive of my work. Well, you know what I decided.

I hope to cover the varsity basketball team at States. But I'll let everyone know right now, I will not be able to cover the last 2 days of States in basketball. I have already made my travel arrangements and will be covering States in Track and Field on Maui that Friday and Saturday. I wish the schedule was such that the different sports didn't overlap, but I imagine there just isn't enough time to do it that way.

In the meantime, I will continue to have to make very tough decisions.

That's all for now.

Al

March 26, 2007 through March 31, 2007 Recap

Sorry I haven't been blogging for a while. I thought I was busy before, ugh, some things have changed which increased my work load even more. I now have a few assistants to help me with track meets. I really need the help as it's impossible for one person to cover a track meet so the coverage has been greatly expanded. Of course, that means that I have many more photos to process now. It is currently 3pm on Monday and I still have 3 galleries to go from Saturday. I need to think about this when I get a chance.

Last week I covered the following events:

Tuesday - JV Baseball vs Maryknoll - 9-2 win

Wednesday - Int Black Baseball vs St. Louis - Great comeback for an 8-7 win

Thursday -

1. Varsity Girls Tennis vs Punahou - 5-0 loss to the always formidable Puns

2. JV Baseball vs Pac-5 - A roller coaster, fun game that ends in a win, 6-5

Friday - Intermediate Track and Field Meet held at Iolani (with official results)

Saturday - JV/Varsity Track and Field Meet held at Iolani (with official results)

All the above events are covered with photos and stories at www.iolani-events.org

I'm still working on my schedule for this week, but I can say, if all goes well, I will be covering the Var II and Var I Girls Basketball games on Tuesday, along with the Intermediate ILH Championships on Thursday and Saturday, and the JV/Varsity Track meet on Saturday. I was hoping to do the girls basketball games at Kamehameha on Wednesday but that isn't going to work out, sorry.

Last week I announced that I would be doing cropping on all photo orders, free of charge. I also will do some photo retouching in certain instances. For example, I had an order today where the photo, although good in all other ways, was tilted a bit to the right. This is an easy fix using photoshop, so I modified the original and replaced it in the customer's order. You may still do your own cropping, actually, I prefer you do. But, if I see an order where there is no cropping done, I will assume that the customer isn't aware that they can crop or just didn't want to try. Those are the orders I will concentrate on, but I will look at every photo purchased and will make improvements if they are needed.

New Product Announcement!

I have had many requests to do end of season team slide shows. But, except for teams that my kids were on, I've always declined them because they were just too much work and I couldn't offer them in a way that made business sense for the team and me. I now have acquired a new product that allows me to create slide shows much more quickly and the final product is really nice. I do believe that I can offer slide shows now that will be affordable. So, if you want me to create a slide show using my photos (or yours if you want to add some), please let me know. My price will be based on how extensive a slide show you want (length, number of photos, text, etc.).

That's all for now.

March 12-17 Recap

This past week was a normal, very busy week.

Monday, it was girls varsity tennis overpowering a combined UH/La Pietra/ St. Francis team 4-1.

Tuesday, I covered the Varsity Girls II basketball game as they dominated HBA, 55-40.

Then it was the marquee game as the Varsity I team took on number 1 ranked Kamehameha. This was a shocking game as the Lady Raiders took no prisoners, running to a big lead from the start and never looking back. Final score was 49-33, Raiders. I don't think the Warriors played very well and I expect that the next time around will be a much tougher game.

Wednesday, it was a comeback 5-3 win for the Intermediate Red baseball team. Excellent game for the Raiders.

Thursday, it was 3 events.

First it was the JV Baseball team vs MPI. Not everything was clicking on this day for the Raiders as they fell 6-2 to the Owls.














Then it was over to the pool to see some girls water polo. The first game was our Varsity II team taking on Kamehameha. This was no contest as the Lady Raiders beat the Warriors, 15-1. It could have been much more but Coach Look showed mercy and stopped the team from scoring.












The Varsity I team then took on the Varsity I Warriors who were state champs last year. This, as expected, was a close game with the Raiders pulling it out in the end, 13-11.

Friday it was over to Kamehameha to cover the Intermediate track and field meet. The weather was awful. I spent at least half the meet under the scorer's tent but still managed over 1000 photos.

Saturday it was the always-fun Ralph Martinson track and field meet at Punahou. This year the format was changed so that only the girls would compete at Punahou. The boys competed at Kamehameha in a different meet. I covered the girls, sorry boys. The weather was much better on Saturday, about 2000 photos worth. The problem with morning meets at Punahou is I have to shoot into the sun for all the field events until the sun gets pretty high, but I'll take that any day over rain!

All stories and track meet results are posted on:

www.iolani-events.org

March 12-17 Tentative Schedule

Monday - Girls Varsity Tennis
Tuesday - Boys Varsity Baseball (for a little while)
Priority Girls Varsity II Basketball and Girls Varsity I Basketball
Wednesday - Intermediate Red Baseball
Thursday - JV Baseball (for a little while)
Priority - Girls Div II Water Polo and Girls Div I Water Polo
Friday - Intermediate Track at Kamehameha
Saturday - Girls JV/Var Track at Punahou

March 5-10, 2007 Recap

On Tuesday, I covered the ILH opener in varsity baseball as the Raiders took on a strong Kamehameha team. The Warriors have been spoken of as favorites this year since they have their whole pitching staff back from last year's squad. The Raiders didn't back down an inch, though, and pulled out the win with a 5-4 score.

Wednesday, I saw the Intermediate Black Baseball team take on Punahou Blue. I believe it was 5-1 going into the last inning. I had to leave, figuring the game was pretty much over anyway. The Raiders then scored 5 in the last inning, winning a very exciting 6-5 game against the Puns!

Thursday, it was the JV Baseball team vs. Damien. This was a blowout that only got worse as the game went on. Final score, 10-0 for the Raiders when the mercy rule kicked in.

Friday, I covered the Intermediate Track and Field meet at Iolani. There are certainly a lot of Intermediates this year! We haven't been able to get through all the events yet, so the officials have been switching around the order in each event.

Saturday, it was over to Kamehameha. First, I covered the Intermediate Girls water polo team as they faced Pac-5. This, too, was a blowout, at least it was at the end of 3 quarters, when I left, with the score at 9-2.

I then walked 100 yards over to the track to cover the JV/Varsity track and field meet.

All these stories are covered at:

www.iolani-events.org

For all you track and field fans, you might want to take a look at my track and field and cross-country only website at

www.usatf-hi.org

I'm still looking for some team representatives to help with event stories. When I don't have anyone writing the story, I will mention it in my "events" story. When I write it, it will probably be pretty brief. I really want to concentrate on the photography and feel I can't do a good job on either when I need to do both. Please volunteer and help support your children's team. If you don't want to write the article, just take notes, and I'll write the article.

Thank you for your continued support.

Maui Track and Field Update

March 10th Kiwanis Maui County Middle School Championships

Kailea Tracy-Visintainer, an 8th grader from Kamehameha Maui, finally beat Lea Lundblad after 17 tries in a super prep 400 meter race. Her time of 60.29 beat Lundblad's time of 62.41. The conditions on the the track were wet and rainy. The race was over before it began as Visintainer jumped out to an early lead in the first 200 meters that Lundblad just could not close. You would have to go back to 2001 to find the last time Lundblad was beaten on her home island. After the race Lundblad said that she will probably only run the 400 in a relay leg. Her main events are the 800 and 1500 meters. Visintainer now begins training for the USATF Nationals in Walnut California. Lundblad will now take a short rest and begin preparing for her freshman year in cross country.

Track News From Maui - 030407

Yesterday, Kailea Tracy-Visintainer, an 8th grader from Kamehameha Maui, ran a 59.8 400 meters in a practice meet. Next weekend Kailea will run head to head with Lea Lundblad in the 400 for the county of Maui championships. This could be the quickest 400 meters ever run on Maui for Intermediates, as the time could dip under 59 seconds. Stay tuned.

Tentative Schedule 3/4/07-3/10/07

My tentative schedule for this week is as follows:

Monday - Girls Varsity Tennis vs MPI at MPI (very tentative)

Tuesday - Varsity Baseball vs Kamehameha (may not stay the whole game), then State Championships in Poetry at St. Andrew's

Wednesday - Intermediate Black Baseball vs Punahou Blue

Thursday - JV Baseball vs Damien

Friday - Intermediate Track and Field at Iolani

Saturday - Girls Varsity Track and Field at Kamehameha

Iolani Does "High School Musical"

The Iolani performing arts department is currently putting on "High School Musical" at Hawaii Theatre. I was fortunate enough to cover the final dress rehearsal on Wednesday. Shows are Thursday, Friday and Saturday night at 7pm. Friday and Saturday are already sold out. The last I knew, there were a few tickets left for Thursday. I loved the show! If you get a chance, don't miss it.

Tentative Schedule - 2/26/07 through 3/3/07

The winter season state championships are almost complete. They are a lot of fun to cover, but also a tremendous amount of work. Covering about 4 softball, soccer or basketball games a day is a lot. And, this week it's wrestling. Wrestling is only 2 days, Friday and Saturday, but they tend to be very long days.

I do have a few days I can devote to Iolani events this week, and next week I hope to get back to complete Iolani coverage.

Monday - JV Baseball at Punahou
Tuesday - Boys Varsity Tennis
Wednesday - "High School Musical" - yes, I will be covering the dress rehearsal, so photos will be available
Thursday - Undecided, may not be able to cover anything due to "High School Musical"
Friday - Wrestling State Championships
Saturday - Wrestling State Championships

2007 HHSAA Boys Soccer State Championships

After watching almost every game and every team in this tournament, I have a few observations.

First of all, Punahou is a fine and worthy champion. This is a team that you can never count out. In their first game, against Kealakehe, it was scoreless until Caton Smith found the back of the net at 56:00. Final score, 1-0.

In the quarterfinals, Punahou really showed what they were made of against KS-Maui. At 60:00, Kelii Dias of KS-Maui gave his team a 1-0 lead. This lead held up until 80:00, yes 80:00, when Christopher Walker tied it with a PK. The game went to overtime where John Cowen scored 2 minutes later. Final score, 2-1.

In the semi-finals, Punahou went up against Roosevelt. Roosevelt had pulled the upset of the tournament, beating a talented, powerful (but maybe overconfident?) Kapolei team, 4-1. Could the magic continue against Punahou? No, Punahou went on a scoring spree with the largest scoring total of their season. Final score, 10-1.

In the finals, Punahou would go up against an extremely fast and talented Kalani team. Kalani had beaten Kalaheo, 3-1, in the first round. In the quarters, Kalani beat fourth seeded Makua Lani in a closely contested game, 1-0. In the semis, it was a 2-0 win over Leilehua.

I like the Kalani team. It reminds me of the Iolani team - small, fast, smart, and good passing. I guess that's not surprising since the Kalani coach, Myles Arakawa, is a former Iolani coach who led the Raiders to championships in 1997 and 2000. I expected this to be a good, close game. And it was.

Kalani scored first, with the goal going to Carter Kam at 14:00. Punahou tied it up at 33:00 when Alessi Sia found the back of the net. Kalani answered at 55:00 when Danny Higa gave the Falcons the lead. Punahou's size, strength and depth was starting to take it's toll, though, and Deryck Lim tied it at 66:00. Then, in the last minute, Ben Strand won it for the Buffanblu.

This was a great final match between two talented teams. But, what I really liked about this matchup, was these teams had great attitudes. They never gave up and they played as a team.

And, what a great present to give retiring Punahou head coach, Bob Clague, who first won this tournament in 1976 and many times since then.

Great tournament!

HHSAA Girls Soccer State Championships 2007

My congratulations to Kamehameha-Kapalama! This is a worthy champion. Their speed and skill was impressive and a joy to watch.

Also, to Pac-5, who won a double over time, shootout over Mid-Pacific for the Div II crown. What a game!

A few thoughts I had as I watched almost all of the games in this tournament:

1. This was another well run, fun tournament for all the participants.
2. There is quite a large difference between Div I and Div II. They play at a different speed.
3. As I watched all the Div I teams, I couldn't escape the nagging feeling that some of the best teams were left out of this tournament, specifically Punahou and Iolani. I watch the ILH all season and, without any stats to back me up, I can say that these teams were good enough to not only be in this tournament, they would have been somewhere near the top.

If you have scores of head-to-head matches between Punahou or Iolani and the teams that were in this state championship, please send them to me. I'm especially interested in the pre-season tournaments where there was a lot of league crossover. This topic will be the subject of a future article.

Also, if you have thoughts on the selection process for girls soccer, please email me. I know it is a difficult task to choose the teams fairly, but it seems to me that in girls soccer, at least, a little tweeking is in order.

Thank you.

HHSAA State Softball Champs Musings

I love the idea of high school state championships. All the athletes I know strive to qualify for these tournaments. The athletes and teams that make it have to work hard and improve themselves. It's not easy to qualify and it's even harder to win.

A problem I've seen in the past is that I don't think the best teams are always in the tournament. I know this is very difficult to accomplish and it's a tough numbers game that sometimes leaves deserving teams out in the cold. Last year, I believe that happened in certain sports, volleyball, basketball and soccer immediately come to mind, but there are probably more that I'm just not too familiar with.

I really like the idea of the stronger leagues having a "play in" possibility to qualify where the team that just misses qualifying has a chance to make it by beating a team from another league who also has just missed. This is why the wildcard games in major league baseball were instituted. I like it and see that it's starting to happen in the HHSAA tournaments. This is a great trend and I hope it continues.

That said, and I am the first to admit I'm not an expert on softball, it seems to me that softball worked out really well this year. I saw many ILH games during the regular season and I spent about 6 hours a day at the HHSAA Championships this year, so I guess that either makes me a bit crazy and/or gives me a bit of background to say the results were accurate.

I'm really only talking about Division I because I really didn't see enough of Division II to comment (but I really like that Division II exists). The final results were Baldwin, Mililani, Iolani and St. Francis. I saw almost all of Iolani's games this year, know most of the girls, and have to say I'm totally biased in my thinking about them. I also saw St. Francis quite a bit. Mililani and Baldwin I hadn't seen at all until this tournament, although I heard that they were both powerhouses. And they were.

Both Mililani and Baldwin have outstanding pitchers which gave them the edge and the means to make the finals. All four teams have a strong defense and can hit. It's the pitchers, though, that in my opinion made the difference.

Baldwin has Nicole Alconcel and Mililani has Makani Duhaylonsod. I saw them both pitch a few games and they were awesome. I love Makani's changeup. Added to her power it really makes her tough. Nicole, what can I say, if I could pick one pitcher to build a team around, she'd be on the top of my list. Not only is she a great pitcher, she is an all around outstanding athlete and dynamite with the bat.

So, my kudos to the HHSAA for doing a great job with this tournament. Getting the right teams to vie for the championship and running a smooth tournament is not easy. Baldwin and Mililani are both super teams, they deserved to make the finals, and Baldwin is a very worth state champion.

HHSAA Softball Championships

Sorry, loyal readers. I know I've been remiss in my blogging, but it's not because I'm on vacation. I've been at the HHSAA Softball Championships quite a bit, more on this later.

On Tuesday I was hoping to do boys paddling. I've had quite a few requests to cover paddling and I finally had a chance. Of course, the wind was bad on Tuesday and it got cancelled.

Wednesday and Thursday, I've been over at Rainbow Wahine Softball Stadium mainly covering our Lady Raiders but also doing and watching some other games. Our Raiders have been playing and looking like champs. They won the first game against Moanalua, 10-4, on Wednesday.
The girls are hitting well, defense has been superb, and the pitchers have been in control. I HOPE IT CONTINUES! Tonight we play Mililani at 8pm in the semi-finals. Please come out and support this team. If you absolutely can't make it, it will be televised on OC16.

Tentative Schedule - 1/29/07 - 2/4/07

Monday - day off
Tuesday - Boy's Paddling
Wednesday through Saturday - I am covering the HHSAA State Championships in softball this week. If it turns out that I am free to cover an Iolani event, I will. But, it will be a last minute decision.

The Iolani Varsity Softball team's first game is Wednesday night (8pm) at the UH softball stadium. Please come to support this wonderful, fun to watch, team!

(Very) Tentative Schedule 1/22/07-1/28/07

Monday - Boys Int Red Soccer vs Pac-5
Tuesday - JV Softball vs Kamehameha
Wednesday - Varsity Softball vs Sacred Hearts (last game of regular season)
Thursday - Int Girls Tennis vs Punahou (last match for ILH championship)
Friday - Boys Varsity Soccer vs Pac-5
Saturday -
Girls Varsity Soccer vs Kamehameha
Boys Int I Basketball vs Punahou (maybe a half, depends on soccer game)
Boys Varsity II Basketball vs WOL