Meeting one of Ohio's best runners...

Meghan Vogel (left) and the Big Orange

It's no secret that I'm a fan of high school cross country.  I've blogged about it on these pages before and I imagine some of the Fish Report readers get enough of the 'over-coverage' I give it on the website during the fall season.  I've officially moved on to high school basketball now and I'm enjoying the start of an exciting season for both the boys and the girls.  However, this past weekend presented me the chance to blog about one more cross country story before 2011 is over.

Thanks to my neighbor (and Fish Report LIVE! co-host) I had the opportunity on Saturday to meet one of next years top returning D-III girls runners in the state of Ohio.  West Liberty-Salem junior standout Meghan Vogel was in Russia with her parents to visit Russia junior standout Lauren Francis and her parents.  Meghan individually finished 6th at the state meet a little over a month ago and led her junior class dominated team to a 3rd place finish overall.  Meghan's mother, Ann, is the coach of the Big Orange and her father, Jason, is her biggest fan.  The trio came to Russia for the first time Saturday night with some map guidance from their GPS.  Once they found our village, they attended the Russia-Minster boys basketball game and Meghan had the good fortune of sitting in the Raiders rowdy student section.  During halftime of the varsity game I was walking by the student section when I recognized Meghan and she appeared to recognize me as well.  I shook Meghan's hand and asked her if she knew who I was.  She said, "you're the guy from Fish Report, right?"  I had to smile as I'm not sure I've ever been identified that way.  I told Meghan I would catch up with her and her parents after the game and I was looking forward it.

Later that evening, after the Raiders victory, I did catch up with the Vogel's and we talked about everything from running to work to food to religion.  Meghan, Ann and Jason have a lot in common with us Russia folks, including a freshman brother and son that attends the University of Dayton.  I would also like to add that Jason is a pretty fair ping pong player, as I witnessed him giving quite a game to a Russia basketball player that is pretty good himself.  I did my personal best to convince the Vogel's how well they would fit into our community, particularly our cross country program, but I understand they have plans of their own back in West Liberty.  Oh well, I tried.  It was a real pleasure spending time with them and of course talking running.  My neighbor and I even managed to invite ourselves to West Liberty next summer to run the hills around Ohio Caverns with Meghan, Lauren and anyone willing.  I'm not suggesting we can keep pace with a couple of the best runners in Ohio, but perhaps we can say we did for a few minutes.

So, my blogging about cross country in 2011 has finally come to an end and I'm thrilled I was able to get one more post in before the year is over.  In 2012 you can bet Fish Report will 'over-cover' high school cross country again.  We'll follow the Russia Raiders and all our favorite area teams...and yes, that now includes the Big Orange from West Liberty-Salem!

Black Friday...

I finally did it.  I finally rose up before dawn, 4:10am to be exact, and went shopping on my first Black Friday.  It wasn't planned.  For whatever reason my body woke me up at that time and I felt the urge to join in the hysteria I've always heard so much about.  The day before I quickly thumbed through a few of the sales flyers that were packed in the back of my newspaper and a couple of items caught my attention.  My favorite running shoes were on sale and a few electronics I've heard my kids talking about also seemed to be reasonably priced.  Before I headed out into the dark I nudged my wife who was asleep and asked her if she wanted to go too.  She said no, she would rather sleep.

I didn't travel far, Russia to Piqua was it.  Before I even got to my destination I got a text from my wife saying that now she was awake and wished she would have joined me.  Those running shoes were at the top of my list.  I seem to go through a pair about every six months and it was about that time again.  I arrived at MC Sports around 5:10am for a 5:30am opening, anticipating a long line.  When I pulled in my parking spot they were already letting people in and there were about 20 shoppers total.  I went straight back to the shoe department, grabbed my shoes, paid and left.  Might have been in the store 10 minutes.  Next stop was the mall...let's get ready to rumbleeeeeeee!  I walked into Sears, grabbed two electronic items for my kids (I can't tell you what the items were since it's Christmas presents!), paid and left.  Wow, that was easy.  I was already done and it was only 6:00am.  Since it wasn't even daylight yet and I'd crossed everything off my list, I decided to stop in at Home Depot just to check out the deals.  Thirty minutes later I was heading for home, back before 7:00am.

Granted, my wife's Christmas list is much, much longer and I'm positive if she would have been along we would have had to stop for lunch at some time.  However, it was my first Black Friday and the experience was great.  I didn't have to wrestle with any shoppers and I have a new pair of running kicks!

Fish Report LIVE!...

Yogi Berra said it best, "when you don't know where you're going, you might wind up someplace else."  That kind of describes what happened recently when I thought my Fish Report website was legit enough to obtain some media credentials to the high school state cross country championships a couple Saturdays ago.  I wanted to do live streaming audio coverage of the race for all the local folks back home that couldn't make the trip and I even had a few personal requests to do so.  So I emailed in the media credential application as required and received a reply the following day that read, "Our analysis of your website is that is a personal blog, not a bona fide media website.  Therefore, we will not be able to give you a media credential for the cross country state championships."  I replied back asking what is required to become a bona fide media website?  I received another reply that read, "A bona fide media website is one that doesn't contain personal content or photos and essentially has articles and coverage like a newspaper."  So, for the 900+ daily Fish Report visitors out there, please understand we're not bona fide.

I was a little frustrated over the whole situation.  After all, I still wanted to cover the race, but I wasn't allowed inside the fence to do so.  That's when I suggested to my neighbor, a fellow cross country fan, that we do a state cross country championship preview show and stream it live on my new Fish Report LIVE! page.  I told him I would set up a studio in my basement and it would be just like ESPN.  He liked the idea and we decided to air our first show the Thursday night before the state meet.  Rigging up the set was a little challenging with wires going everywhere for internet, a webcam, and some lighting. We also had a lot of notes to help us out.  Once the show started however, it was 28 minutes of fun.  After we finished we both agreed, this is something we'll do again.

I'll admit, it's not ESPN, but the 13 people that tuned in that night and commented to us afterward all seemed to enjoy it.  We plan on talking about a variety of sports and with basketball season coming up you can bet we'll be talking hoops for a few months.  We would also love to have any special guests that care to share their expertise or opinions on the show; just email me and let me know what you're thinking.  I'm a big Twitter fan and we hope to eventually be able to read live tweets during the show.  I'm also using Twitter to send out messages while we're broadcasting, so if you have a Twitter account you can follow me at: twitter.com/Fish_Report.  To go back to the quote I started this blog post with, Yogi was right...I wasn't sure where I was going and now I'm someplace else.  I'll give you one more Yogi quote that explains where we're at, "You can observe a lot by just watching."