{"id":252,"date":"2008-09-15T07:37:02","date_gmt":"2008-09-15T07:37:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.wabash.edu\/fyi\/2008\/09\/15\/lesson-dont-leave-the-field-before-halftime\/"},"modified":"2008-09-15T07:37:02","modified_gmt":"2008-09-15T07:37:02","slug":"lesson-dont-leave-the-field-before-halftime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/2008\/09\/15\/lesson-dont-leave-the-field-before-halftime\/","title":{"rendered":"Lesson: Don’t Leave the Field Before Halftime"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jim Amidon<\/em> \u2014 I’ve been promoting and covering Wabash football for more than half my life. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve left the field at the end of a game \u2014 or a half \u2014 a minute or two early in order to get to the press box ahead of the crowd.<\/p>\n

At Denison on Saturday, the first half lasted forever. Scoring, penalties, and a scoreboard malfunction caused the half to drag on. I was dragging heavy camera gear up an down on the sideline, and I was hot, sweating, and very thirsty as the final minutes of the half wore on. When Denison scored to pull within one point just before half, I headed for the press box… and hydration.<\/p>\n

I paused at the top of the home stands \u2014 which are not tall like at Wabash \u2014 and watched Matt Hudson complete a couple of passes. My camera was packed up, but I thought to myself, “What if Matt has a shot at the endzone and I’m up here?”<\/p>\n

Realizing I was standing at a pretty good camera angle, I got my gear ready to shoot and settled in the Denison parents’ section when Hudson uncorked a bomb to Kody Lemond. The pass was deflected up in the air by a Denison defender, who made what appeared to be a touchdown-saving play. I was firing away and captured 14 images of the play. The only shot I missed was when Lemond stretched out to grab the deflected ball \u2014 and only because I was jumping up and down (in the Denison section!).<\/p>\n

Here’s what it looked like from up there, starting with excellent pass protection by Wabash’s offensive line:<\/p>\n

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The Denison defender closed very quickly and made by all accounts a terrific defensive play.<\/p>\n

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Lemond never takes his eye off the ball. He told Howard Hewitt he “kind of blacked out on that one,” but he’s completely concentrating on the ball.<\/p>\n

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This is when I think Lemond knew he had a shot at the ball. Look where his feet are \u2014 seven yard line.<\/p>\n

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Look where his body is on the shot below. Yeah, I missed the dramatic dive because I wanted to watch it, not just shoot it.<\/p>\n

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Andrew Rode realizes it’s a touchdown!<\/p>\n

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The Denison defender in this shot tells the whole story. The Big Red had played a very solid first half and had captured momentum going into the locker room. Then, with less than a minute, the entire game changed.<\/p>\n

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Moral of the story: Never leave until the final whistle blows… no matter how thirsty you are!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jim Amidon \u2014 I’ve been promoting and covering Wabash football for more than half my life. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve left the field at the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"w_featured_image_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}