Life in Corydon -- the blog

Ah, basketball

2008-12-06T02:19:00.002-05:00

College basketball is my all-time favorite sport. My fantasy is to be in Las Vegas and sit in a sports book and watch every game of the first round. High school basketball is a close second for favorite, though. In both college and high school, it sure would be nice if there were more free throws made. The Panthers just lost a one-point squeaker to rival N. Harrison. If they'd have made a couple more free throws they could have won. On the other hand, N. Harrison had a chance to put the game away at the end of the 4th quarter, but missed the front end of a one and one.

The other thing that I noticed in the N. Harrison game was that Corydon failed too many times to follow their shots. They'd take a 3-pointer and drop back to defend instead of going aggressively forward to be ready for a rebound if their shot didn't go in. Which happened too many times.

Still waiting to see how the girls adjust to Mr. Uhl's system. Seemed to work pretty well Thursday night when they hammered Scottsburg. Jeffersonville will be a test Saturday night.

Vote!

2008-10-24T18:16:00.002-04:00

As much as I'd like to proselytize for one candidate this year, I won't, because I said when I started Life in Corydon that it would remain politically neutral.

So I'll settle for urging you to go to the polls. Whichever candidates you support, please go vote. They need every vote they can get.

Coverage

2008-09-10T23:10:00.004-04:00

Ok, here's the deal. Why so many boys soccer games? My grandson is on the team, so I go to almost every game. And when I'm at the games, I take pictures, because that's what I do. So I can either run those pictures on the website or just let them sit around. Seems kind of silly to not run them. For instance, in this case (N.Harrison game), we wouldn't have put up anything new until Saturday when we plan to post the football game. So running Wednesday's soccer game gives us an update we otherwise wouldn't have had. Will we post tomorrow's game with Silver Creek? We might save that one for a slow day next week. As for how we choose what else we cover? We try to stick to home games, particularly since gas has gotten so expensive; but because we're a real small outfit, we can't cover all the home games in every sport. We also have to stick mostly to the major sports.

On Saturday, we'll be covering the Corydon volleyball invitational, the Lanesville Heritage parade and the second weekend of youth soccer.

That was fast

2008-08-27T20:06:00.002-04:00

All of sudden, we're not only into the first sports week of the season, we're through it and into the second. Hard to keep up. I won't attempt to explain how we figure what to cover, but we do try to spread coverage around, and it's more likely we'll be at home games than away games. We'll do our best to post results as we find them, but it's a hit and miss affair to try to get scores in a timely fashion.

This week's biggest game of the year is against N.Harrison here at home Friday. Should be a good one.

Outpouring of love

2008-08-08T09:08:00.002-04:00

Sadly, this week, world-renowned glass artisan Bart Zimmerman drowned while trying to rescue two fisherman whose boat had capsized in the Ohio River. Bart and his brother had carried on the glass-making tradition of four generations in their glass factory in Corydon. Life in Corydon does not publish news, but when this tragic event occurred, we were working on a frivolous slideshow about the midway at the fair, and somehow it didn't seem appropriate to run a happy picture of people on an amusement ride. So we've taken a short timeout to honor Bart and express our condolences to his family.

On Thursday, a gathering and celebration of his life was held at his church, the First Capital Christian Church. At 1 pm, the announced beginning of the event, the parking lot was nearly full and hundreds of people had already gathered in the main room at the church, queuing up to express their sorrow or share fond memories of Bart. This went on for six hours until the celebration of life service at 7, where more than 700 gathered in his memory.

Truly an amazing outpouring of love.

The fair

2008-08-02T12:59:00.004-04:00

In my more rebellious days (read youth), I got tired of taking the pictures the newspaper wanted me to take for them and decided to do something all on my own. So I took two weeks of vacation and photographed the 1972 Harrison County Fair, from setup to teardown. A lot of things haven't changed much. The midway, where you can still spend $10 to win a prize worth $.50, the food stands where you can get any sort of food that's not good for you, the 4-H kids, who bring in their livestock and sleep with them (actually, now they mostly sleep in tents nearby.) The entertainment is a bit different. Porter Wagoner and a then unknown girl singer named Dolly Parton were the big name attractions, but there was a daredevil car show and an animal show and, of course, harness races. The harness races are about all that remains from the entertainment back then, but they don't draw much of a crowd anymore. Amazingly, they still use the old barns on the south side of the track, barns that looked ancient in 1972. So now we have demolition derbys and tractor pulls instead of the Joey Chitwood Auto Show and a karaoke contest instead of Dolly Parton. But times change, and it doesn' seem to have hurt attendance. The place was packed Thursday night, 4800 people in attendance. That's a lot of funnel cakes consumed. Tonight's the wrapup, with the big tractor pull, big tough machines that don't appear to be all that friendly to the environment.

Next year is the 150th consecutive Harrison County Fair, and there are a lot of plans to make it special. We'll probably do some kind of display of my 1972 pictures among other things. An abbreviated slideshow of them is online at Life in Corydon.

Happy Birthday to us

2008-07-27T16:30:00.002-04:00

It was two years ago that the Life in Corydon website went public. We thought that the county fair would be a good week's worth of pictures to get us going. So we're still going two years later. If anyone actually reads this and if you have any suggestions, let me know. I'd like to start thinking about a military section devoted to the men and women who're off in a strange land serving our country. In the meantime, we'll keep doing what we're doing.

"The conscious part of me interferes as little as possible."
--Roger Waters, Pink Floyd

2008-07-19T10:54:00.000-04:00

Today I'm finally posting the 8U softball pictures from last weekend. They're worth waiting for. Zachary did a great job. I feel a bit bad that it's taken so long, but we had a few things pile up this week and we prefer to space them out a bit so there's something new as often as possible.

So while we were at the Vanguard's band camp week-ending performance last night, those pictures probably won't be posted until Monday or Tuesday. Then it's almost county fair week. Then school starts. Amazing how fast that happens.

"I have found my subjects within sixty yards of my door."

--Alfred Steiglitz

The big baseball weekend

2008-07-14T14:02:00.002-04:00

We'll start with softball (it makes sense, honest.) Corydon's 8U softball girls won only one of three games at the state tournament in Salem and bowed out Saturday, but we'll post some pictures of their play in a day or so. In the spirit of full disclosure, I should note that my granddaughter Emily was one of the Corydon 8U All-Stars. I didn't get to go watch since I was at home trying to sit very still after medical stuff the day before, but Emily's brother Zachary went to take pictures for us.

Meanwhile, here in Corydon, the 13U Corydon All-Stars whipped North Harrison, 25-15 for the district championship. More like a football score, as one coach noted, a TD and a field goal difference. We don't have pictures of this past weekend's 13U games because I was sitting still and Zachary was busy with the 8U softball and also the 11U state championships. The 13Us play in the state championship here this weekend, though. We'll cover that tournament.

But we do have pictures of the 11U state tourney, where Corydon's team unexpectedly made it to the final game and captured runner-up honors for themselves. Their best effort was probably the championship game of the losers' bracket, when they beat N.Harrison 9-6. We're posting pictures of that game today. The Corydon boys did not finish first or second in the district tourney, but got to be in this weekend's tournament as the host team. Floyds Knobs won the district and North Harrison was runner-up. After Sunday's win over N.Harrison, Corydon lost the state championship, 14-5, to Floyds Knobs. Corydon players and coaches seemed to be disappointed, but state runner-up is an achievement to be proud of, particularly when you do better than expected.

The blog, resumed

2008-07-10T21:40:00.001-04:00

The last blog entry hinted that we might give up doing the blog. After all, the most important communication at Life in Corydon is the pictures, and I've tried to keep words to a minimum. But there is usually more to be said than can fit into the little word boxes on the front page, or in the headlines and captions. So beginning now, we'll try to keep the blog updated often enough to make it worth your while to check it regularly. That implies that there will be anything worth reading, of course, but you can decide about that.

I'm going into the hospital Friday to zap a pesky kidney stone, so updates on the website may be a little slow coming for a few days, but Zachary and Meredith will be out this weekend while I'm taking it easy.

Stay tuned.

--bryan

"Gramma said when you come on something good, first thing to do is share it with whoever you find; that way the good spreads out no telling where it will go.

Which is right."

-Forrest Carter, The Education of Little Tree

Words and pictures

2008-03-24T14:52:00.002-04:00

The problem with this blog has been that most of what I have to say about Life in Corydon is said by the pictures. I'm not really very wordy. In addition, we've tweaked the design of Life in Corydon for 2008, giving us a small space on the front page to comment about the featured event. Which leaves little else to say here.

This is spring break week. We'll take this downtime to ponder what to do next with the blog. But it's not worth a lot to anyone if I only do entries once a month.

Vincennes Lincoln ends Lady Panther season

2008-02-16T22:08:00.002-05:00

The Lady Panthers suffer their second regional defeat in Jasper at the hands of the Vincinnes Lincoln Alices (the volleyball sectional champs ended their season there). They came out cold and appeared to be nervous, committing ten turnovers in the first half, and found themselves behind by 11 at the break. They didn't catch fire until near the end of the 3rd quarter when the lead had increased to 15, 45-29. The Ladies then turned it on, going on a 31-20 run the rest of the way. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough, and although they had a chance to tie, down 3 points with 30 seconds left, they couldn't score, and a late foul gave the Alices the victory, 65-60. Keinsley led with 25, Bussabarger had 12, Dyer 11 and Decker 8.

Quite a run for the Ladies

2008-02-12T19:49:00.000-05:00

With Saturday night's awesome win over host Mitchell (last year's 2A state finalists), three of the Lady Panthers notched their third straight sectional championship in three different sports. Jolanna Stiles and Jenna Keinsley were on the winning sectional softball team, then the winning volleyball team, and now basketball. Meghan Bussagarger started her streak on the track sectional championship team, then shared championships with Stiles and Keinsley in volleyball and basketball.

Outstanding!!

Black Saturday for basketball

2008-01-27T12:55:00.000-05:00

First the Lady Panthers blow an 11-point lead against an inferior Brownstown team, then an over-confident, can't-lose-at-home I.U. does just that, lose to an outmanned Conneticut by playing both miserably and stupidly. Then the Panthers also lose to Brownstown, though in this case, Brownstown was the better team, at least Saturday, with freshman Brandon Dunaway on the sidelines with a broken foot. Unfortunately, he's out for the season.

The only thing that could have made the day worse is if Kentucky had won. Oh, yeah, right, they did.

The one good thing that happened Saturday was the big kickoff dinner-dance to celebrate Corydon's 200th birthday. The Gerdon Center was packed and it seemed like everyone was having a swell time. Even those of us old enough to point out that the "art room" was actually the band room when we went to junior high school in that building. A few years back...

Winter break's over

2008-01-22T18:34:00.000-05:00

Basketball season's winding up. Baseball tryouts already in full swing (so to speak.) Big week this week. Mid-Southern Conference swimming championships coming up Thursday night, two basketball games Saturday, and the big kickoff dance for Corydon's 200th birthday Saturday night. We'll be there for all of those events if you can't make it.

Thanks for your support in 2007 and keep visiting us.

New season

2007-11-30T01:49:00.000-05:00

OK, it's been more than a month since the last post. For those of you who may still check this space for new blogs, my apologies. I still fall back on the notion that the pictures at Life in Corydon are really the blog, and words are only an afterthought.

We're now well into the winter sports season; we survived last weekend, which featured two basketball games and the Light Up Corydon celebration all on the same day. I finished posting that day's events at about 2:30 am -- three new slideshows.

Huge congratulations to the girls basketball team, who beat Scottsburg last night, 55-53, AT Scottsburg. It's a rare event for the Warriors to lose at home. Big win for our side!! We would have liked to be at that game, but had committed to doing the opening boys swim meet at Southridge. (Another full disclosure here...Zachary Webb, my grandson, swam in his first meet for Corydon, and since I couldn't be in two places at once, I opted to go to the swimming meet. Sorry we missed the Scottsburg game.)

Speaking of Zachary, though, please note that he's been shooting pictures for Life in Corydon and doing a remarkable job for someone with only a few months of experience. He's a big fan of girls basketball, too. He photographed their other big win over New Albany as well as their only loss of the year to Bedford North Lawrence.

archives updated

2007-10-12T22:40:00.000-04:00

For anyone who's interested in previous Life in Corydon slideshows, they're now all linked through the archives page. Or pages, that is.

Apologies

2007-10-10T10:36:00.000-04:00

Geez. I get to Crawford County High last night for the cross country sectionals, only to discover that the girls race is just ending. I thought it started at 6:30, but it really started at 5:30 and by 6, when I arrived, the last of the girls were straggling to the finish line.

"What now?" I thought. It doesn't seem fair to photograph the boys and not the girls, and if I stay I'll have to admit I made a mistake and was late. (I HATE being late to anything.) Well, it didn't make sense not to go ahead and photograph the boys race since I was already there. So I did, and this is the admission I was late and missed the girls race.

Ladies, I'm sorry. But it was a good idea to be there for the boys 4th-place finish. Well done!

Homecoming Week

2007-09-27T01:17:00.000-04:00

Today kicks off our coverage of Homecoming Week, with the annual Panther Puff football game. We'll be at the bonfire tonight and at the homecoming game Friday night. We'll try to squeeze in coverage of Cockadoodle Days and girls soccer on Saturday. Then we'll slow down a bit and get back next week to our more usual 2-3 updates a week. Daily updates wear us out...

Pardon the gap

2007-09-20T20:56:00.000-04:00

Sorry we've not updated since Monday. I like having new stuff two to three times a week, but I've been fighting a cold and didn't cover a couple of things we normally would. Starting with football Friday night, however, it looks like something new will be posted almost every day from now until Cockadoodle Days.

Stay tuned

Full disclosure

2007-08-22T00:20:00.000-04:00

Hmm, it's been more than a month since the last blog. That's because we did nothing in July except shoot as many as six baseball games a day, the fair came as soon as that was over, and we've been recovering. But that's not the purpose of this blog entry...

As I've mentioned before, there are more events to cover than we can possibly photograph for Life in Corydon, particularly high school sports events. Frankly, we concentrate on the sports with the most fans -- football, basketball, soccer, track. We've also done some cross country, swimming, volleyball and tennis and some Vanguard competitions. Mostly we confine our coverage to stuff that happens at home; we can't travel very much.

Having said that, in the spirit of full disclosure, I need to tell you all that my grandson Zachary Webb (#3) plays on the soccer team, so I go to almost all of his games to at least watch. It wouldn't be fair to put all the boys soccer games I attend on the website, but I often take pictures anyway, sitting as a fan on the sidelines. When we cover a game for Life in Corydon, we like to "take you there." We go early and stay late, and take pictures of not only the game action, but all the other things that happen at the event. You can't do that from a chair on the sidelines.

So today I was at the soccer game against Meade County, a Kentucky powerhouse. We'd just published the first two boys soccer games and Monday's girls soccer game against the Meade County girls, so I was just going to be a fan and watch.

But I did take my camera with me, and having just looked at the pictures, I think I should share them. It's certainly not balanced coverage to put up yet another boys soccer game, nor is it our usual start-to-finish style, but photography is a funny thing. Sometimes pictures are hard to come by and sometimes they just jump into the camera. That's what happened today. Looking through them, at the urging of my dear wife (Zachary's grandmother), I decided I should make a slideshow for the fans of our website. And since it's in the spirit of Life in Corydon to share, that's what I've done.

And give it up for goalkeeper Josh Faulkenburg who didn't play a lot last year because starter Teddy Lasky did such a good job. Josh has had a lot of opportunities to learn this year -- Providence scored 5 goals against the Panthers, Jennings County had 6 and the bullies from Meade County tallied 9. Talk about learning under fire...he's had some awesome saves.

Whew!

2007-07-02T09:36:00.000-04:00

A couple of weeks ago, the Friends of Harrison County Youth baseball (and softball) guys asked me if we'd like to be the official tournament photographers for their July baseball tournaments. Sounded like something Life in Corydon should participate in, so we agreed. This last weekend was our first effort. What they wanted mostly were pictures of every boy and girl in the tourney. There were 16 teams in an 8 and Under single elmination event, and 10 more teams playing in a 10 and Under competition. Figure an average of 12 players per team, that's 312 at least. The first two nights there were often 4 games being played simultaneously.

Meredith and I managed to do it, I think, though no doubt we missed somebody's kid.

I've never photographed six baseball games in one day before. If that wasn't bad enough, on Saturday I was standing near the Floyd dugout thinking, "You know, if I spend enough time inside the fence, it's inevitable that I'm going to get hit by a ball." Not five minutes later a foul ball caught me on the ankle. Nice bruise.

We'll put the latest pictures on Life in Corydon later this morning and get back to some non-baseball later this week. If you're interested, there are literally hundreds of baseball pictures for the weekend's games at "lifeincorydon.smugmug.com/sports".

good grief

2007-06-14T10:51:00.000-04:00

It's June 14 already; been three weeks since the last blog. Well, I have said that the real Life in Corydon blog is the site itself, and these words are an occasional addition.

I'm in Muncie at Ball State University for the annual Kalish Picture Editing Workshop for newspaper editors and photographers. I've taught at this workshop for more than ten years. Now, however, we're deep into a post-session to discuss philosophical issues, and I'm getting antsy.

The last thing I photographed before I left was the Star Family Circus. The acts were simple and there were a lot of opportunities to spend money, but everyone there had a great time, including me. It's a wonderul thing to be able to go to places like this and take pictures and then share them with everyone. But Meredith sent me some nice pictures from the Cinderella Kids workshop, and they went up this morning.

Saturday we'll put up pictures from the Friday night concerts on the square, though in the interest of full disclosure, the ones we're going to post are actually from the previous Friday. Later in the weekend we should have more youth softball and baseball. I believe next week is playoffs. I'll be there. Happy to be home.

Wish I could bottle it

2007-05-25T10:33:00.000-04:00

The Corydon Central girls softball team once again proves that at crunch time, when it counts, particularly in tournament play, it's intensity, spirit, enthusiasm, will-to-win, being winners that is the most important ingredient for victory. The Panthers were all fired up for the game with Madison, slapping high-fives even during the introductions and jumping up and down with anticipation. They jumped in the first inning, too, on Madison, for four runs. Their intensity never diminished and they were never really threatened, though Madison did pull within one run with their own big inning in the second. After that, Jenna Keinsley and her support team held them scoreless. Jenna had 13 strikeouts and a big double play in the bottom of the fifth inning. The Ladies move on to regional play with their 6-3 win.

Worth noting -- after the game, Jennifer McCarty, who didn't get to play, thanked the team for making it all so much fun. Teams that have fun playing almost always do well. Those who achieve great heights often are successful because they do it just for the joy of it.

Wish I could figure out just what it is that gets teams fired up, believing that they're winners, and bottle it. You could make a fortune.

I need to repeat here that Life in Corydon is a small venture, without any big financial backers, so we can't afford to travel to many events that aren't at Corydon. So although we're excited that the Lady Panthers are going to the regional, we won't be there, and will have to root for them from here.

Congratulations to Meghan Bussabarger and Gretchen Zimmerman for making it to the state finals.

Track & field

2007-05-19T10:54:00.000-04:00

Track & field is a lot harder to shoot than, say, basketball, or the Easter Bunny coming to downtown. There's so much going on at once, and it's spread out all over. There's also the tricky little photo business of timing and focus, but it's still fun.

We just finished sectional coverage for both girls and boys. Both teams dominated the jumps -- high jump, long jump, pole vault, and hurdles, too, if you stretch the definition of a jump event. The boys finished second to 5-time sectional champ Floyd Central and the girls were third, losing to Floyd Central and New Albany. Looks like both teams could use some help in the shot put and discus.

Check out the picture of Harrison Mann's incredible tie for third in the 3200 meter run. They run for 3200 meters and the finish for third can't even be determined with a photograph (not mine, they had an official one at the track.)

For that matter, check out the stats for the boys. If you've ever tried to find prep sports stuff online the day after an event, you've been frustrated. I have. I don't really do much else but pictures. (I'm now touting Life in Corydon as the website that was turned down for media credentials by the IHSAA for not having enough words.) But I do like to get results in. The C-J website has them. Sometimes. Somewhen. Never in a timely fashion. So I stayed Thursday night to get official results and then spent way too much time getting them into the computer and posted. Be so much easier if I could point you to the Courier's results. Or the Democrat's, but that's only changed once a week. I just found the C-J results for the girls sectional. I'll get those up later today.

Congrats to Michael Uhl and his staff. Those two sectional meets were as efficiently executed as I've ever seen.

World's greatest college weekend

2007-04-24T09:59:00.000-04:00

Most of you probably know the Little 500 bicycle race at Indiana University from the movie Breaking Away, wherein a scroungy group of town guys put together a team called the Cutters and won the race to the dismay of the snooty fraternity chaps. I actually rode in that race once, in 1965, as a member of the Delta Upsilon team (we didn't think of ourselves as snooty fraternity guys), but had hardly even thought about the race again until 2001, its 50th anniversary. All veteran riders were invited and there was even a special short race for those still fit enough and a sedate ride around the track for those who weren't. I skipped both, not being fit enough for the race but not willing to be an old guy toodling around the track either. In fact, I skipped the race entirely that year, just hung around the night before to hang out with my old team members.

But finally, last year, I decided to go to the race and take along my grandson Zachary. We had a good time, our team finished 6th and was hoping to do better this year. The race was this past Saturday and Zachary and I went again. (It's obviously no longer The World's Greatest College Weekend anymore, because hotel rooms are available. The Little 500 fanatics are fewer. Still, it's an enjoyable event.) Turns out our team had worked hard all year, but had some trouble during qualifications, and were way back in the 8th row in 22nd position. But they were better than that, soon made it up front to the lead pack of riders, and stayed that way until about the 170th lap (out of 200), when the lead pack of 5 pulled away. That pack of 5 ultimately sprinted together on the last lap for the finish line -- major drama. We finished a lap behind them in 6th, but a lap ahead of the 7th place team. To go from 22nd to 6th was quite an accomplishment. Reminded me of 1965 when we qualified 23rd and finished 10th.

Oh, the winners? The Cutters. No longer a fictitious team, they won for the 8th time.

A new record

2007-04-18T16:41:00.000-04:00

I worked for newspapers for 40 years before I retired, most of that time as a photographer. But Monday evening I did something I've never done before. I photographed three high school sporting events -- a tennis match, a baseball game and a soccer game. Then I went to the YMCA soccer fields and photographed a youth soccer game. Then it was next door to the baseball fields where I did both baseball and softball. Six sporting events in 5 hours.

The pictures are posted now.

Disclosure

2007-04-15T23:17:00.000-04:00

In the interests of full disclosure, please note that the Dr. Pat Moss featured on the front of the April 15 Life in Corydon is my brother. However, it's not filial devotion that has his trip to Honduras as the lead story. It's because he made those pictures available to us. We'll be delighted to do the same for anyone who sends us similar material.

Query me at bmoss@lifeincorydon.com.

Hurray for Meredith

2007-03-23T14:19:00.000-04:00

Photographer Meredith Sarles has just been awarded 3rd place in the Celebrate Life photo contest, a Kentucky-based competition with entries from all over the country. First place was awarded to a California photographer, second to a Kentucky photographer, and third to Meredith. Honorable mentions went to 12 others in various states.

Meredith's picture was from her story about the Corydon Jamboree. A Celebrate Life photo contest giving an award to a picture that celebrates life in Corydon. Very cool.

This is her first ever photo award. Well-deserved. Cheers.

What a weekend!

2007-03-19T15:52:00.000-04:00

So in the space between the end of basketball and the start of spring sports comes, conveniently, the NCAA basketball tournament. I'm such a fan of the tournament that I watched the coverage almost non-stop from Thursday through Sunday. The first two days were totally boring with almost no surprises. Maybe Winthrop, but they were tabbed by many to be better than they were seeded.

And then came Saturday. That may have been the best day of NCAA games I can remember. It's too bad Louisville wilted at the end of the game, and as an IU grad, I was disappointed that we didn't play better, but what heart those guys showed! Their refusal to quit even made up for that really careless throw-in at the end. Can't say, as a die-hard Hoosier that I minded Kentucky getting beat. Sorry. They were clearly outmatched, anyway. Great games. For what it matters (don't press me on this, I'm not sure my opinion matters at all), I'm pretty pleased with Kelvin Sampson so far, though his coaching in close games is still suspect, I'm afraid. But if he continues to get his teams to play with that intensity, the future looks good.

Tough Loss to Madison

2007-03-07T21:21:00.000-05:00

Not sure what it means that Madison's teams beat both of Corydon's teams in their respective sectionals, other than I'm sorry it's all over.

As I've said before, at tournament time, talent never seems quite as important as heart. The teams who believe they are winners generally turn out to be so, unless overwhelmed by superior talent.

Now the NCAA tournament is about to begin, and you can almost always tell who are the winners and who are the losers just by looking at the bench, particularly during timeouts.

First round close one

2007-02-28T17:47:00.000-05:00

Corydon 49, North Harrison 47

As an assistant coach said, at this point it doesn't matter how many points you win by, what matters is moving on to the next round. It didn't really seem like North Harrison was going to get control of the game, even when they finally went up by a point in the 4th quarter. Still, the close contest had more than a few hearts pounding in the small but vocal Corydon crowd.

Showing my age -- my thanks to Alan Stewart who pointed out that I had put "North Central" in a headline this morning instead of "North Harrison". As Alan said, it hasn't been "North Central" for decades. Mea culpa.

Awesome victory

2007-02-25T22:00:00.000-05:00

A 33-point first quarter, three-point goals seemingly at will. That was amazing. Sixth victory in a row. Bring on the sectional.

Sectional pictures

2007-02-15T12:35:00.000-05:00

The IHSAA has specific rules prohibiting the sale of pictures taken at IHSAA tournaments, beginning with sectional competition. We maintain galleries at lifeincorydon.smugmug.com so that you can easily obtain pictures of the events we cover.

But because of IHSAA regulations, we won't be posting gallery pictures from the Scottsburg Sectional, or from the upcoming boys Madison Sectional, either, for that matter.

We are planning to be at Senior Night against South Central this Friday.

End of the road for this year

2007-02-14T12:44:00.001-05:00

As Meghan Bussabarger's grandpa said at halftime, the Lady Panthers "couldn't buy a basket." Icy shooting (less than 20% and a fired-up Madison teamed pretty much settled the issue in the Scottsburg sectional final. We were paying less than complete attention as equipment problems shut us down until the fourth quarter, when girls soccer coach Kyle Jones came to the rescue and lent us his camera for the whole fourth quarter.

Thank you, Kyle. We couldn't have provided game coverage without you.

Sectional sensation

2007-02-08T16:34:00.000-05:00

So the Scottsburg Warriorettes were the team to beat in the Scottsburg sectional. So be it. Corydon was mentioned only as one of a group of other contenders. But the Lady Panthers showed their grit. Composed and confident, they jumped to an early lead and by the end of the third quarter, had built it to 15 points.

They needed it, though, because Scottsburg finally realized they were going to have to play hard to win and play hard they did. In a furious rally, they scored 24 points in the fourth quarter before time finally ran out on them, two points short.

Meghan Bussabarger led the Lady Panthers with 14, C.J. Reed had 12 and Teresa Greer 11.

Next game is against Salem, Friday, 6 pm.

Swimming

2007-01-20T11:10:00.000-05:00

Was that just Tuesday? Swimming team did really well at the Salem Invitational, boys won and the girls were third. Swimming is a challenge to photograph. There's so much humidity that it takes your camera 20-30 minutes sometimes to get unfogged, then you have to worry about splashed water, then you have to try to keep track of what's going on, which is harder than it seems when you're watching it on television.

Coming up next Tuesday night is girls basketball vs. Salem, and on Friday, boys vs. Paoli.

We'll be there.

Great day of basketball

2007-01-14T14:59:00.000-05:00

Two really good home games Saturday. The girls beat Madison 50-46 for their 6th victory in their last 8 games. The boys held off a fierce comeback by Crawford County to prevail, 64-62, a night after falling short in their own comeback to Clarksville, 49-48. They've now won 4 of their last 6. Slideshows of Saturday's games are posted. Galleries (where you can buy pictures) will follow the first of the week.

Swimming. Corydon doesn't have a pool for their swimming teams to compete in, so all their meets are away. Life in Corydon is traveling to Salem on Tuesday night for the meet there. Coverage will be posted Wednesday morning.

Civilized wrestling

2007-01-07T12:42:00.000-05:00

Ah, wrestling. "Civilized," meaning wrestling that's not televised entertainment but actual combatants wrestling by a standard set of rules. Saturday's Old Capitol Classic was great fun, especially for Corydon's Brett Eads, who won the 112-lb class. When we get a full list of results, we'll post them on the sports page.

We're back...

2006-12-26T19:01:00.000-05:00

Not that anyone probably noticed (I hope), but we had some major computer problems the past ten days and had to revise the site with borrowed equipment. It worked, barely, but it was a pain, and very slow to accomplish.

January is going to bring a few modifications to the site, mostly additions. We're going to try to do more with submissions from the community. We still don't have a fancy interface to make it easy, but we encourage you all to send in stuff you'd like us to publish. There will be a new community page to display your work.

We're also adding a sponsors page, where we're recognizing a few enlightened local businesses that have decided to support Life in Corydon. They're all good people and we're happy to be working with them.

Overtimes

2006-12-17T12:11:00.000-05:00

Don't think I've ever been to a basketball game before where both the jayvees and varsity went two overtimes each. The players were tired, the cheerleaders tired, we were tired. Winning was certainly appreciated by all. Scott Decker had 25 points for the Panthers, 19 in the first half, coming mostly on 5 3-pointers. He also hit the clinching free throws in the second overtime.

Maybe they were all tired and had little left for the next night at Madison where they lost 61-53.

This week's focus is Intermediate School tournament

2006-12-08T17:38:00.000-05:00

Corydon Intermediate School holiday tournament is this week. We covered Corydon's 6th grade team in victories Monday and Wednesday night, and we'll be back for the finals Saturday. Full coverage will be viewable on Sunday morning. (Probably Saturday evening about 7, but we don't want to promise.)

Pictures look good so far. Stay tuned.

Big weekend

2006-12-03T01:48:00.000-05:00

Okay, it's 1 am and we've finished posting the third night of basketball in a row; it's unlikely that will happen again soon. I want to reiterate that there are way more games happening each week than we can cover. We'll try to give some attention to as many different teams as possible, and we'll try to make it to the more important games. We'll do a lot more home than away games. But we can't be at all of them.

Make suggestions, though. I got an email from a jayvee mother who suggested we cover the jayvees, so I went to the jayvee game with North Harrison, where the Corydon boys made an awesome comeback to tie the game with seconds left, then went on to win in 2 overtimes. Good suggestion.

Got another email that will get us to the Corydon Intermediate School next week for a holiday tournament. So let us know what you think should get our attention. Don't limit it to sports, either.

Boys basketball

2006-11-25T00:26:00.000-05:00

Well, if you like basketball, you gotta love this time of year. Four boys and girls high school games a week, two IU games (we don't acknowledge the existence of Kentucky at this website; UL ok.)

Game at Lanesville came up a bit short, but the team looks pretty solid, and Lanesville's no pushover, particularly on their home floor.

The truth about this blog

2006-11-24T09:41:00.000-05:00

The truth is, I'm a visual person. I do words ok, but I mostly choose not to do words. I do pictures. The website is really the blog, abeit a non-verbal one.

Heartbreaker -- New Albany 65, Corydon 55

2006-11-19T12:07:00.000-05:00

I can never decide if I'm sorry I missed a game like Saturday's New Albany game, or happy I missed the heartbreak. Small consolation, I suppose, but the Lady Panthers once again looked very good against a favored opponent. So close!

Meet Meredith Sarles

2006-11-18T14:28:00.000-05:00

A couple of months ago, we got a call from a woman we didn't know named Meredith Sarles. We operate a workshop for photojournalists, the White Cloud Workshop, and she was calling to say she was interested in the workshop, would like to make her photography better and work with us.

We finally met, of all places, at Cockadoodle Days, where we were both photographing the queen contest. The following week I met with her to look at the pictures she'd made there. I was surprised at how good her pictures were. She's a Harrison County native, grew up in New Salisbury, graduated from North Harrison, had virtually no formal training as a photographer. No reason to expect much. But her pictures were good enough I immediately arranged for her to do some work for Life in Corydon.

She's photographed several things for us already, and you'll be seeing more. We're glad she's here.

Impressive

2006-11-18T14:21:00.000-05:00

Puns wouldn't be any good if they didn't make you grimace...

The Lady Panthers press has delivered two big wins for them so far. They crushed Perry County and held on to beat a Charlestown team that has been picked by some to win the conference. For a while it looked like Charlestown was going to be no more trouble than Perry County, but they got their act together in the second half and made it a game.

As I've noted before, Life in Corydon is a small operation. We couldn't cover every football game, so we certainly aren't going to be able to make it to every girls and boys basketball game. We'll do as much as we can, but we won't be at every game.

See the Biddy Ball girls

2006-11-16T10:46:00.000-05:00

The Lady Panther Biddy Ball teams will be playing at halftime of the home Lady Panther games over the next few weeks, beginning this Friday night.

Really, it's not to be missed.

Veterans Day and Basketball Begins

2006-11-13T11:01:00.000-05:00

Two things we covered this weekend, the opening of Corydon's girls basketball season and Veterans Day ceremonies. The Lady Panthers didn't disappoint. After a slow start against Perry County, they turned on a full court press and thumped the Lady Commodores, 60-33. A pretty good group of Corydon fans made the trip to cheer their team on.

Veterans Day was disappointing. I searched all week in the local papers for information about Veterans Day ceremonies, and found nothing. Both the papers had special tributes to veterans, but no indication about what was happening on Veterans Day. The VFW, though, had been advertising a chicken dinner that day, so that was at least happening. On Saturday, I headed downtown about 10:30, cruised around the square, saw nothing that resembled a possible ceremony getting ready to happen and went back to the VFW.

All the participants were inside, having decided to stay where it was warm and dry. At 11:00 am, the appointed hour, the VFW folks presented a short program to a small crowd of less than 50 people. Neither paper covered the event.

It is sad, really, that we are at war and our tribute to veterans was so small and sparsely attended.

Glad that's over

2006-11-08T10:42:00.000-05:00

Try as I might, I can't totally ignore yesteday's election. Let me just say this...

I'm really tired of negative campaign advertising, particularly the kind that distorts the records and opinions of the candidates by narrowly focusing on something they may have said or a bill they may have voted on (sometimes years in the past). It's an insult to our intelligence to think that we voters don't see through that kind of propaganda; an insult to suggest we don't know that most issues are not simple enough to be condensed into a sound bite.

For a change, I'd sure like to see a candidate stand up and say something like, "My opponent is an honorable man who is committed to his beliefs. Here's how our positions differ. You should choose between us based on our stance on the issues."

Politicos say that positive campaigning doesn't work. How sad, if that's true.

Enough politics. Life in Corydon will get back to other important stuff, like Lady Panther basketball.

Biddy basketball

2006-11-06T09:07:00.000-05:00

I still think T-ball is just about a sweet as kids' sports gets. But after watching Lady Panther Biddy Ball twice over the weekend, I have to admit I'm hooked. The most fun are the 1st and 2nd graders, most of whom don't yet have any experience unless you count the ones who've learned to dribble in grandma's living room (don't try that at your own house, kids. Moms aren't as forgiving as grandmas.)

Yesterday the coaches introduced the concept of "walking." That is, if you have the ball and wish to move up the floor, you must dribble it, not carry it and run. If you move and don't dribble, you get called for walking and the other team gets the ball. Faced with the new rule, the girls did better. Still, there was a lot of dribble some, run some.

Interestingly, there were also a lot of situations that reminded me of a rugby scrum. Eight young players crowded together struggling for one oversized (for them) basketball.

Baskets were rare, but roundly applauded. A good time was had by all.

Winter sports start

2006-11-03T09:56:00.000-05:00

Saturday, Nov. 4, kicks off the winter sports season. The girls basketball team travels to Tell City for a scrimmage. Boys first game is Nov. 16. Girls swimming starts Nov. 27 at Charlestown, boys swimming Nov. 30 at Southridge. Wrestling opens with a meet at New Washington on Nov. 29.

Basketball is an interesting challenge for us at Life in Corydon. The Corydon High School gym has lights which give a reddish cast to pictures taken without flash. It's bad enough that Alan Stewart of the Democrat sets up portable strobe lights to overpower the existing overheads.

Basketball is also problematic because it's a sport that photographers think of as vertical. That is, the players are tall, the action is largely vertical, so most photographers hold their cameras to make vertical pictures. Your computer monitor, however, is horizontal, just like your television. So it doesn't make any sense for us to try to post vertical pictures on a horizontal monitor. Making horizontal pictures of basketball, though, is a challenge.

We'll do our best to be up to it.

My very favorite Corydon event

2006-10-24T14:25:00.000-04:00

Of all the smalltown happenings here, this one is my favorite. So much so that the members of the Kalish Picture Editing Workshop advisory board changed their schedules so that I could be here Saturday night for the parade. They wanted to meet in New Orleans on Saturday, but changed it to Friday when I told them I had to be here.

Had to run around and change my plane schedule at the last minute, which was a big pain, but I made it in time.

It was worth it. Though I have to admit, I like the crowds as much or more than the parade itself. Check out the coverage.

That's all for 2006 football

2006-10-21T01:39:00.000-04:00

The second half was a draw; Corydon tied Batesville, 7-7. 'Course they had to also count the first half, so the final ended up 55-7. Fumbles, interceptions for touchdowns...the first half wasn't pretty. And it was a long, ugly bus ride, too. You can't hardly get to Batesville from here.

Football sectional

2006-10-17T19:32:00.000-04:00

I've covered high school sports for, um, let's say many years and I'm still amazed at how a team can be great one week and ho-hum the next. I know it's all about self-confidence and effort and believing you're a winner, but the hard part is figuring out how to get your team to be winners instead of losers. I've covered four Corydon games this year. Two of them, Perry County and West Washington, were not the Panthers' finest hours. But in the other two, they were awesome, Salem and North Harrison. Particularly the North Harrison game. Corydon just never gave up, against a team that was supposed to beat them easily. That was one of the best high school football games I've seen. Would have been great to have won, but the Panthers should be proud of their effort.

Hope that's the Panther team that shows up this weekend. Anyway, we'll be there in Batesville to cover it.

Thank you all

2006-10-16T16:50:00.000-04:00

Life in Corydon was conceived as a photography site. Pictures are non-verbal. Short of the occasional explanations to allow better appreciation of the images, words shouldn't be necessary.

Still, there often are important things to be said. Therefore, we've added this blog to Life in Corydon, to talk about photography and high school sports and kids soccer and events downtown on the square and parades and all the things we've been photographing.

In this first post, however, I simply want to thank all of you who visit our site and especially thank those of you who have been kind enough to email us with your thoughts. Keep them coming.

We wish for Life in Corydon to be a place where you can send your own pictures and thoughts and we'll try to get them published.

Thank you.