Sep022009
Email reminds me of painful photo 20 years ago
Filed under Fall sports, Fans, Football, General, Good Ole Days, High School Sports, Parents, Photographing sports, Photography, Sportsmanship by bob hammerstrom at 1:17 pm
It is a small world. I received an email recently from a player who’s nine-man football game I photographed 20 years ago for the Fergus Falls Daily Journal. His email reminded me of the ugly side of covering high school sports - the agony and unsportsmanlike conduct some fans bring to the game.
It wasn’t an easy choice to run this photo across the front page in The Daily Journal 20 years ago this November. I was working for the Fergus Falls, Minnesota, paper as their staff photographer, covering a state semi-final football game on the freezing cold prairie. After a series of (4-play) overtimes, a receiver for Rothsay dropped the ball in the end zone right in front of me. I pulled up my camera and began taking pictures of the jubilation.
It wasn’t until I got back to the paper and processed my film, that I noticed the men in this photo jeering the receiver on the field. Action photos ran on the sports pages, and I discussed this photo with management before a decision was made to run it.
It was just too powerful of a photo not to run. We couldn’t ignore the moment as if it didn’t happen. I wrote about this in a previous blog entry, and through the miracles of modern-day technology, a former Rothsay player standing just outside my camera’s view, Googled “Rothsay Football” and spotted my blog entry. I received an email soon afterward.
Shane Balken remembered the game well. Balken wrote, ” I was a player on the Rothsay football team during the sectional championship game against Verndale, Minn. in the fall of 1989. I couldn’t help but read with keen interest into your thoughts about the game, as I also remember it, and the subsequent outcome very well.”
Since I rarely heard feedback from the people I photographed (this was pre-internet and email for me), only a few paper cancellations and a dozen phone calls crossed the editors desk at the time. That was pretty big back then. I can’t imagine how many comments we’d receive these days online.
He said, “I happened to be next to the player who dropped the ball and was the first one to pick him up after the play. I vividly remember the fans jeering after the loss. Looking back on the story and picture that ran, I didn’t agree with it at the time as the pain of the loss was very hard to take, but now that I work with the media and also write occasional articles, I certainly understand and appreciate where you were coming from. Your picture captured so many emotions from the game, that it still sticks in my memory 20 years later.”
Wow, if that doesn’t make a photojournalist feel good. Thanks for the note Shane.
-Bob Hammerstrom
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