Flashes of Panic

What a stereotype: I like my roller-ball pens, but I have a habit of forgetting the cap is off. By halfway through any session, I am usually ink-smeared in some way. I suppose this would be a reliable way of distinguishing reporters from other spectators, if it wasn’t for the media credentials.

Need a dolly for that? The NCAA is apparently trying to cut down on the size of football and basketball media guides, since they were supposedly becoming big, glossy recruiting catalogs. Track guides are sometimes spiral-bound and rarely run to as many pages as your average T&FN (though they use much heavier paper.) Still, I saw the director of one large east-coast relay carnival with a stack of media guides which was easily a foot and a half high.

Our little slice of the meet: The press box is stuffed, but the “independent” reporters like myself (writing either for the running media or various newspapers) are outnumbered by the various “SIDs” (Sports Information Directors) producing program-specific press releases for athletic-department websites. So while the meet media apparatus is kept quite busy, the number of reporters actually attempting to cover the whole meet is fairly small.

Multi-tasking: The availability of a press box and the occasional down-time between events lets me stream my interviews in to my computer right at the venue, which puts me ahead of the game. Sometimes I can start writing my stories before the day is even over.

Name-withholding: Sometimes I feel a bit fake acting familiar with the great athletes at a meet like this, but I did get a warm glow when I was greeted first by one of the coaches, a two-time Olympic marathoner. I won’t drop the name, but he recognizes me because I ran with him once or twice at my former job, where he writes a monthly column for the print magazine.

Fast: Since I had more than one affiliation on my credential request, they apparently just picked one. Therefore, my credentials (and the label on my seat in the press box) identified me with “fast-women.com.” (Only at a track meet would that raise no eyebrows.) At least one volunteer handing out results checked to see if I wanted results from the men, too.