The Olympics... and beyond

The coming months are starting to look pretty busy and that's not even considering the busy spring schedule for the local high school teams, which will start in early April. There are a bunch of trips on the docket in the next few months leading up to the big one this coming summer. The first trip on the schedule is one that has become a pretty regular tradition. At the end of March I will be flying to Orlando and traveling on to Vero Beach to cover one of our local teams getting in some spring training action. Most of the trips I've made to Florida with local teams have been with Kingswood baseball and last year, Kennett baseball was also there at the same time, which was perfectly convenient for me. This year, Kingswood softball is making its maiden voyage to the Jackie Robinson Training Complex for a few days. I am flying down the night before the team and leaving the day after they do. I am currently looking into something to do for the day on Friday before the team arrives...

The last couple of days have provided some milestones in the road ahead and in the road that I have traveled over the years. As I mentioned in the last blog post, at this time two years ago, I was in Beijing for the Winter Olympics, my third Winter Olympics experience and my fourth Olympics overall. Without a question, it was one of the most unique experiences of my life, covering another Olympics during the midst of the pandemic. My Facebook memories informed me that two years ago on this day, I was at one of the most unusual venues I've ever covered an Olympics at, the Shougang Big Air facility in Beijing. This was the only outdoor venue in the city limits of Beijing, with the rest of the outdoor events in the mountain villages outside of the city. What made this venue unique was not just the fact that it was an outdoor venue in the city limits, but rather where it was built. It was built in an industrial area of the city that the government was working to revitalize. Driving to ...

Facebook memories have become an easy way to look back on what you were doing a year ago, or three years ago, or 10-plus years ago. They might jog your memory and bring some things back to the forefront for a bit. That happened today when I looked at some of my memories from two years ago. It was on this day, Feb. 2, back in 2022 that I landed in Beijing for my third Winter Olympics experience. That in and of itself is just another trip on the Olympic list, but that particular experience, that particular day, remains to this day one of the most surreal things I've ever been a part of and it made me want to retell the story. With the COVID-19 pandemic still in full force, the Beijing Olympics used a number of different protocols to help keep everyone safe, including media members who were traveling to China to cover the Games. One of the protocols, which proved to be a giant pain in the butt due to airline travel problems, was having all games-related personnel arrive in Beijing on ...