Not every story I tell is a glorious one.
Well, there ARE glorious stories I tell, but there's a lot of shit behind it that makes you wonder why a) I put up with what I do and b) I never got arrested for smashing people's heads in.In my 21 years at the Palatka Daily News, only one county team has won a Florida High School Athletic Association state football playoff game (I'm stopping you now, Interlachen 2022 fans of that Sunshine State Athletic Association title ... it doesn't fit this category!).
It was this Friday night five years ago that my late boss, Andy Hall, and I were over at Wisnoski Field at Wiltcher Stadium covering Crescent City's state playoff football game between the Raiders and Fort Meade, which was coached by former Florida Gator Jemalle Cornelius. And here's the weird part: I COVERED Cornelius when he WAS Fort Meade's quarterback in a destruction of Marathon High in the FHSAA 1A semifinals in the Keys in 2000 when I worked down there as Citizen sports editor.
Crescent City had also played Fort Meade before when they were District 8-1A rivals, so I got to know Cornelius as a coach.
While Cornelius was a former Gator, Crescent City's head coach was a former Florida State Seminole -- the beloved and legendary Clarence "Pooh Bear" Williams. He was now in his second year as the Raiders' head coach and they were having a great campaign with an 8-2 regular-season mark.
In the restructured FHSAA football playoff system, Crescent City was the fourth seed compared to the fifth seeded Miners, so that meant they had to come all the way up from south Polk County to play this game against the Raiders on their field. Trust me when I say this: I don't wish that ride on anyone. It's three-plus hours on state highways and Interstate-4. It's far from a fun trip and win or lose, Fort Meade was not coming home from this game until sometime after 1 in the morning.
As far as the coverage of the game went, it was planned out that I would cover the football game and Andy would write the column. This was NOT our plan, by the way. This was the "scheme" of our editor, who shall remain nameless since he is the worst editor I ever worked for.
Because HE had a background as a former sports editor, HE thought he could run our sports department for the short time he was there. In all my years I've been in this business, I have never wanted to punch a news editor in the face more than this guy. It was seven days earlier on November 2, 2018, that I got called into his office and asked me why we didn't have pictures of Crescent City's regular-season finale, a dominant win at Newberry, in the paper. He didn't ask Andy ... he asked me. I guess he felt that I was more reasonable to deal with than my old-school boss.
"It rained," I started. "And I've got a deadline to meet and I'm trying to do the statistics and write a story. That's time consuming enough! Then you want me to find pictures with no guarantee that I might have a good picture. No! I'm not multi-tasking like that and beside, Andy told me I didn't have to take pictures."
"Well, he isn't in charge of that! I want you to take pictures! We're supposed to have a picture for every football game we cover in this paper!"
Now keep in mind -- this jackass thought it was a wonderful idea to work the one photographer we did have, Chris, into the ground, so much so that Chris quit. This was mere weeks earlier and there was no way in hell we were going to get another full-time photographer at that point. That was made clear by said-jackass.
"So let me see if I get this straight: If I'm covering a boys basketball game and I'm keeping statistics and what not and trying to do a A-class job, I'm supposed to take photos, too?"
"Yes."
"No! I ain't doing that shit because you're taking away from what I do best. You're going to ask me to do the impossible task of all those jobs in one? Absolutely not! If I have a guy who is going for a triple-double, I can guarantee you the young girls who are doing the statistics aren't going to be as thorough as I am."
He basically didn't give a shit about that explanation ... or my job for that matter. He was trying to appease a publisher who put clamps down on him so hard that he was willing to accept mediocrity instead of excellence, and I'll say that to my dying day.
It was in that conversation I just wanted to hit this guy. I've never felt that way about any immediate boss I ever had. He thought his way of doing our jobs was better and both Andy and I knew he was not good at all.
Anyway, back to this story: To do our jobs properly, Andy and I were going to concentrate on the game with me keeping the stats upstairs in the press box, him next to me and having conversations during the game. Our editor was going to be on the field taking pictures and doing a Facebook interview with coach Williams at halftime.
As long as he stayed out of our ways and let us do what we had to do, we were going to be OK.
So I remember before the game began, I'm up in the press box and the editor is already there killing time before he went on the field. Turns out we had to wait almost an hour before kickoff -- lightning was in the vacinity and no game kicks off until that distraction is out of the area. Ironically, the season began with a lightning delay on the same field in the preseason game. Great bookmarks, weather-wise.
And we waited. Meanwhile, the editor asked me to do an interview outside the press box on Facebook to talk about this game. I gave my keys as to what Crescent City had to do, the natural "control the game" and "not commit turnovers" and they would be successful.
By 7:30, the teams were allowed to come out and warm up again. Andy arrived before that and I told him of the delay, which drew a blank response because that meant we were going to miss the 1 a.m. deadline.
Reason No. 53 as to why I was hating this job.
The teams finally kick off and Crescent City grabs a 7-0 lead when all-everything quarterback Naykee Scott throws a touchdown in the back of the end zone of 25 yards to Bernard Wright III on the first possession of the game. Christian Lopez kicked the point after.
The Raiders' defense was doing the rest. The Raiders held Cornelius' Miners to just 57 yards in the first half. And quarterback Dearrick Howard was having a nightmare-like game, getting sacked six times by that relentless Raider D.
The Raiders added on to their score as Scott dodged and weaved Miners defenders for an 11-yard score to make it 14-0 with 5:32 left in the half. They had another chance to score before halftime, but running back Mario Miler fumbled inside the Miners' 10 and the Miners recovered at their 9.
Our editor took pictures and got his interview with Williams and left. Andy and I had one more half of football to cover. Before this game, the Raiders and Palatka had combined to go 0-14 in the postseason since 2002, the last time a county team won a state tournament game in the sport.
That stop of Miler on the fumble gave the Miners some momemtum into the third quarter. Twice, Howard had his team in Crescent City territory. But Wright ended one drive with an interception in the end zone, then Howard was stopped on fourth and 5 at the Raider 25 after the Miners had picked off Scott in his own territory,
Those drives may have made a difference for the Miners -- and shown how snakebitten Crescent City ... Putnam County, really ... was these last 16 years in the postseason.
Finally early in the fourth quarter, the Miners finally found the end zone as Howard hit receiver Jonathon Berrien with an 8-yard scoring strike. But kicker Adam Reyes missed the extra point, making it 14-6. Still, the Miners were within one score of the Raiders in spite of all their offensive woes.
It was Scott playing the role of punter that kept any momentum going on the Fort Meade side. His second beauty of a punt -- a 37-yarder -- was downed at the Miners' 4-yard line late in the game. The Miners couldn't punt the ball away anymore. This was do or die for them. And after getting 1 whole yard on the drive, the Miners forfeited the ball back to the Raiders at the 5 on downs with 2:08 left,
Two plays later, Scott scored on a 2-yard run in which he was pushed with the help of his team rugby-style into the end zone. Scott ran the 2-point conversion in to make it 22-6 with 1:52 left.
It was over and the Miners knew it. One last offensive attempt failed and the Raiders and their fans celebrated their first state playoff win since 2000, a 22-6 triumph that had players beaming from ear to ear. Andy got his interview with defensive coordinator Wes Thompson, whose defense held the Miners to 100 total yards. He left to go back to the offense and do his column.
I stuck around for a bit to hang out in the Raiders' football building and locker room, interviewing both Williams and Scott. I remember Scott telling me he never had dreams of being a quarterback. He was more than happy to play defense. But three years after I saw his debut at quarterback under dirress and difficult circumstances in Pahokee, he had helped make history for his team ... and Putnam County.
As for Williams, he was not just satisfied with the win.
"We want to win a state championnship," he said. "When you're confident in what you're doing, you think about winning a state title. We are excited not because we won, but we keep going."
I said my goodbyes to the coaching staff, left the building and headed back up US-17 to Palatka and back to the Daily News headquarters. My boss was still writing his column, but close to finishing it, and my editor was sitting diagonally from where I sit trying to put together the "photo" page from this game.
He had dumped his photos into our sports photo folder. Andy got done writing his column and I was working on my boxscore/summary and then story when he called me over.
Andy had seen the pictures and he turned his head away from me, trying not to laugh as I looked at the photos our boss gave us.
They were awful. No, no, no ... they were f*cking awful. The backs of heads, coach Williams reacting to a play but you don't see his face and stupid pictures -- I do mean stupid -- of players lining up before the ball is snapped. It was complete amateur hour stuff.
I've said it before and I'll say it to my dying day: Any idiot can take a point-and-shoot picture, but you need some talent to actually take clear action shots!
I did my best not to say anything or react. I went back to writing my story and doing the boxscore. I was done around 12:10 in the morning (I had gotten back to the paper just after 11 p.m.). I still had a scoreboard page to put together, and Andy still had the rest of the sports section to do. He found the one action picture that worked ... even if it was a bit blurry.
So we're trying to finish the paper out and get it to print by 1 in the morning on Friday football nights ... our deadline. It's 12:45 and we finish up. That's when Mr. "I Know It All" Editor speaks up.
"How many of my pictures did you use? He needed an idea of what Andy did so he could really go full out with the photo page.
Andy answered in only the way Andy could:
"Just one."
"One?! That's it? Why did I work so hard to get pictures for this game? I do think we should use more than one!"
And now, here's the moment I will always remember when the affable, funny, charming Andy Hall completely lost it for one moment:
"Fine! I'll f*ckin' re-invent the wheel!!"
And so to appease him, he put a mediocre picture of the two teams lining up before a play on the jump page, which meant whatever extra agate I had gotten done had to be taken out, not that I was going to lose sleep over it at all. We got done, but we were now 10 minutes late.
Our boss was still working on that "photo page," which featured some really terrible pictures on it. I'm not lying by any means there. Once he said he'd post the e-edition online, something either Andy or I did normally, we posted the local sports stories on Facebook and our website and left.
That was it. On a night where we saw a Putnam County team win a state tourament football game, both he and I had gone through this torturous evening with a clueless boss who thought his way was the best way.
Three days later, I'm back at work. And the first thing I see is a memo from our publisher to tell us that our editor was no longer employed by the paper. Either he quit out of disgust or got fired. Turns out it was the latter from my sources.
We didn't have to have this overbearing human being run our sports department ever again. But Andy and I decided we would double cover Crescent City's next state playoff game against Hawthorne ... same scenario where I wrote the story and he wrote the column.
The Raiders lost that game, 50-27, but that's another story considering I got threatened before that game by one of Hawthorne's coaches. Oh, it's a doozy and showed me that people do read what I write, even if it hurts their feelings a little.
As I said before, not every story I tell is a glorious one. But at times, it has a happy ending.
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