The Olympics... and beyond

It's been an unusual high school season. Perhaps the most jarring part about all of it was the lack of fans in many gyms and arenas over the course of the winter. Many schools were allowing a small number of fans, in most cases, a couple of fans per player from the home team. A few other schools allowed two fans per player from both teams. But there were a number of schools who were not allowing fans at all. The only people in the gym, besides the coaches and players were school officials and media members such as myself. This definitely took some time to get used to. It hit me the most at my first hockey game of the season, which took place at the Merrill Fay Arena in Laconia. Berlin-Gorham was in town for the game and the only people in the arena besides the coaches and players on the bench were a few Laconia-Winnisquam-Inter-Lakes parents who had been taking temperatures at the door, ADs from the schools, arena staff, the Berlin-Gorham bus driver and a couple of Berlin-Gorham pl...

And breathe... The past fall and winter sports seasons have been the strangest season's I've dealt with in my 20 years doing this job. They've also been the busiest seasons I've had. With the 10 extra schools put on my list to start this past school year, I've found myself driving all over the state to cover games, even more so than normal. Most weeks I would drive north to Lincoln or beyond at least once, sometimes twice, to cover teams in the Littleton Courier area. Add that to the teams all around the Lakes Region, then throw in playoff games, championship meets and the like and the mileage started to pile up. But, that's part of the job and I'm OK with it, as long as I remember to get some sleep so that I don't total another car. And now, the winter season has drawn to a close and I can breathe again. For a month or so. All in all, it was a fairly successful season and it ended on a pretty good note, for the most part. All three teams in my coverage ...

Another week and another update from the Olympics, this time almost a dozen years in the future. The International Olympic Committee announced last week that it was entering a targeted dialogue with the city of Brisbane about hosting the 2032 Summer Olympics. While it is not official that the Australian city will be hosting the Summer Olympics in 2032, it is likely that the Olympics will be returning Down Under for the first time since Sydney hosted in 2000. As of right now, there are still no plans for the Winter Olympics in 2030 and 2034, though there are a few cities that are rumored to be in the mix, including Salt Lake City and Sapporo, Japan, both of which have hosted the Winter Olympics in the past. It is believed that most of the cities that are exploring Winter Olympics are waiting to see just how the Tokyo Olympics go this summer as well as the Beijing Winter Olympics next February go before moving forward with their bids to host. On a personal note, last week also brought th...

Well, in the last few weeks, there's been a couple of developments on the Olympic front. First, I must say, Facebook memories have been a lot of fun the last few weeks, as my Olympic experiences in both PyeongChang in 2018 and Sochi in 2014 have been popping up in my memories. It's a lot of fun to look back and see some of those places again. And, I've been watching a bunch of the alpine world championships and the biathlon world championships on NBCSN and there has been tons of commercials for the upcoming Tokyo Games, which has helped to stoke the excitement a little bit for this coming summer. Last Wednesday, the press was invited to take part in an online meeting where representatives from the International Olympic Committee and Tokyo 2020 discussed some of the plans that are in place to try and keep everyone safe this summer. The IOC had previously sent out the press playbook, which outlined what we have to do, which I wrote about in my previous post a few weeks ago. T...

The past few days have been interesting when it comes to the Olympics. There's some excitement as well as a little bit of trepidation in these interesting days. Thursday (Feb. 4) marked exactly one year until the start of the next Winter Olympics, which will take place in Beijing, China. Having attended the last two Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia and PyeongChang, South Korea, I was excited to mark the milestone. I have applied for credentials for the Beijing Games and hope that the opportunity comes for me to make another trip to the Winter Olympics. Beijing will become the first city to host both the Summer and Winter Games, so it will be pretty cool to get the chance to see some of the locations I watched on television back in 2008. Of course, I have not yet been approved for credentials, but the application process has begun and I will likely know at some point soon whether or not I have received the credentials. The trepidation of the last few days came in the form of an e-ma...

 During the busy high school season, Sundays are the day when I do my most writing. I try to keep up with things during the week, but usually by Sunday I have a number of stories to write and my deadlines start on Monday, so the stories have to be finished. Today, I had two basketball stories, two hockey stories and about half a dozen alpine skiing stories. Plus, I had to edit a few stories from other writers, but all told, I spent about eight hours working on stories on my couch. While I was working, I had the television on watching a bunch of broadcasts that I had recorded during the week, including snowboarding, biathlon, luge and alpine skiing World Cup races from all around Europe. As I've mentioned before, I spend a lot of time watching these competitions over the last few months and I really enjoy them. Unfortunately, NBC Sports Network is going off the air by the end of the year, which means the broadcasts of the winter sports will probably fall to the wayside. That is pret...

Tokyo has been in the news a bit this week, and honestly, it wasn't terribly encouraging. But then again, that's pretty much been the case ever since last March. It was reported by one news outlet that officials in Tokyo were likely going to cancel the Olympics, which have, for the first time ever, been postponed from last year's scheduled dates to this coming summer. It didn't take long for officials from both the Tokyo Organizing Committee and the International Olympic Committee to deny those rumors and state they are planning on moving ahead with the competition coming in July. Obviously, for me, this has been a pretty frustrating year for many reasons. Of course, the layoff back in April was a big part of it, but also a big part of that was the cancellation of five different trips I had planned, including two huge ones, Ireland and Tokyo. I was really looking forward to spending a few weeks this past summer covering my first Summer Olympics. But, that didn't hap...