Exeter Nebraska-Exeter Milligan Friend football coach Cory Kahlandt. “We lost to Sandy Creek 62 to 64 in triple overtime week three. I think we will have a good game and will probably be a short game as both of us run the ball and establish the line of scrimmage. If we play our style of football both physical and aggressive on both sides of the ball we should be ok.

As long as we play on our toes on defense like we have been we shouldn’t need to stress or anything or try to hard as it is another football game for our guys and don’t make it bigger than it is. We are playing Stanton and they are undefeated.

Playing at Memorial Stadiums is a great opportunity and we need to enjoy it and I still say it’s just a football game but we do need to enjoy the experience out there, it’s a big stage with an awesome atmosphere and I’m excited for our guys making it this far and they deserve it, they worked hard during the off season all back with weights.

We started this back in August 7^th which doesn’t seem like all that long ago along with co head coach Jim Pfeiffer."

 “Dear Big Ten Conference,

I’ve waited a day & I still feel that you REALLY need to address the level of your officiating. To be clear, Nebraska played like *** yesterday, but college athletes & their fans clearly deserve better.

Thanks,

A Concerned Football Fan” (Adam Carriker)

I read a lot of the responses to Adam’s post and most of them were what I expected, blame the refs because they are blind and all that sorts of rhetoric. But I think a lot of people miss the point. 

If you are an arm chair quarterback with a high-definition big screen with a view from above you will see more than a ref twenty feet away. People perceive life, and motion differently from where they are and what they are doing. 

My response posted in response to Adam’s Facebook post was, “Not all officiating can be that bad, there must be another underlying problem that we don't understand and needs to be studied. I can't and won't believe we hire an entire class of buffoons who wear black and white uniforms who can't do their jobs. There must be another answer,” and I stand behind that. 

I don’t claim to know anything about sports, I’m a journalist and a sports photographer and a science nut and I know there is more to this that most people get. Blaming the refs is not the answer. 

If you hold the teams to the same standard of perfection that you hold the refs the score would never reach over 0/0 because a perfect defense would never allow a single point to be scored. 

If you want perfect officiating you will need to install AI computers with cameras located all over the field so you get the perfect call every time. With the use of replay cameras, you have already slowed the game down to the point it is not fun to watch anymore and have taken the human element out and watching a ref stare at a television screen during a review does not make for compelling football. 

Players and coaches make mistakes all the time but to hold refs to the inhuman standard of a robot is not fair. Let the refs make mistakes, that is what makes a game a game. If you were to rank the calls of most refs on a bell curve you would probably find that most calls fall within normal limits with a few on the edges but it is those calls that everyone gets mad about. 

You can’t have it both ways and blaming the refs is wrong. You either need to respect them or get rid of them and let football become a computer sport. What's more likely? A group of incompetent referees or an angry fan who's team lost looking for an excuse?

Price of water

 

Weve been to a lot of high school football games over the last seven years, and a lot of volleyball and softball etc. and the one thing we have noticed is that the price of a bottle of water

is not the same at the concession stands of most high schools. And that goes for the price of candy as well. I know for a fact that we have paid $1, $2 and $2.50 depending on where we are. Now why would a bottle of water cost a different price at different schools?

Maybe it’s to pay for the new LED lights on the field or the gym, we love the new lights and noticed that Geneva had some great lights on the football field, reminded us of Aurora where they can change color and blink. It will be great when all the high schools get new LED lights in their gyms as well. They are much brighter and the color balance is better for photography.

So what is this post really about? It’s about going to a lot of different schools and seeing a lot of different ways of doing things. Now some schools have the introductions where the players come out of a tunnel of other players and some schools skip that part altogether. I noticed that I think it was Beatrice where I noticed the players ran out onto the field but they didn’t run out individually as they called their names. Fairbury does that, and other schools do as well.

Beatrice is the only school I recall that has a half time marching band although Schuyler had a dance performance at half time. Didn’t the Black Diamond Dancers used to do a dance at half time? I don’t recall that this year. A lot of schools keep their bands in the stands and some have flag corps. I do want to make note that Beatrice marching band uniforms look very sharp. Good job guys.

To wrap this up we’d like to see the price of water be a bit more consistant, I think more than $2 is a bit much and $1.25 for a Snickers just makes me have change in my pocket that I don’t want to keep track of. And I want to finish with the cheeseburgers at the Fillmore Central football game, my only regret was not getting a second. Very nice.

Jeff Kezeor

 Beatrice-There are two things I need to say about Orangemen head football coach Jeff Kezeor and the first is he is a nervous bird and a bit jittery because it took me a long time to get this shot, and I planned this shot out in advance so it would look cool with the lights behind him.

The second thing is that he is the kind of coach you want coaching your kids. I watched him on the sidelines talking to the players, giving them encouragement, and telling them to have a good time. I was impressed as well with his assistant coaches, all professional, all there to do the best with a game that was not going their way.

Anessa Baines

Fairbury-Anessa Baines is a fourteen-year-old freshman from Thayer Central high school who plays the middle on her volleyball team. “My team is full of a bunch of great girls who are all supportive who know how to cheer you up when you’re down. They are all helpful on and off the court. Besides volleyball I wrestle, play basketball and throw shot and run hurdles in track. “

New trimmphoto.com page

Photo by Keith Trimm 

 Welcome to the new http://trimmphoto.com/ website. This site was created as the anchor for our news, events and sports media coverage to go along with our Facebook page. Both sites will carry photos, stories and interviews but this will be available if Facebook has issues which it has had many times in the past. 

Make sure to bookmark this page in case our Facebook page goes down (and it has several times in the past.) 

Cropping and Composition

  This article is for anyone who uses any kind of camera including cell phone cameras. I often see moms up close to the fence taking pictures of their kids at softball/baseball games with their phone in the portrait position. Long side up and down instead of landscape side to side and I want to say something but I keep my mouth shut. I get what they are doing, they want a picture of their kid and the background isn’t important. But it is. 

Portrait photography is great for senior pictures and weddings but sports in played out on a field that runs from side to side and leaving that out creates a photo out the context of what you are shooting. If you are only interested in close up photos of your child then read no further. 

One of the most important parts of photography is composition and cropping. Your cell phone camera has a cropping function, at least mine does and you should use it if you want your photos to look professional. If you are happy with the way your photos look then again, read no further. 

Composition has to do with the weight on the images in the photo. The rule of thirds says to make a tic tac toe board in your mind and place the subject in one of the intersections, preferably at the top right or left. When shooting a moving player always and I mean always place additional room in front of the athlete to give them a visual place to move. If you show an athlete looking to one side or the other give them room to look. 

Rule of Thirds

If they are swinging a bat give the bat some room to hit the ball. This can all be done when you shoot the photo or when you crop. Also when possible, crop so there is more image at the bottom than the top, it is best to anchor your image down than up. And always crop for head room. That means leave no more room above the subjects head than necessary. And this is something people don't think about. Watch your background. If possible, and I know it's not always possible, keep telephone poles, trees and other objects from sticking out of your subject's head. I learned this stuff back when I was in college and I don't know if they teach it anymore. 

In this example above Jamie is pitching and the photo is cropped on the left in portrait and on the right in landscape with plenty of room in front of her for the ball to go. Even though the ball isn't actually going anywhere in this still shot it gives the impression that there is someone in front of her that is going to swing. 

The same for this example where Bennet is cropped so he has room to run. 

Here is a great example of using portrait photos for a true portrait of Jordan and a good example of using F3.5 with a telephoto lens to blur out the background. There are cell phones that use a computer to duplicate this effect, yours might do that. 

Here is another example of composition giving Ellie's bat a place to go. This is shot landscape to give the action a place to live. 

Cell phone cameras do allow you to zoom in on the action but they aren't the best at getting clean images at a distance. The best bet, if possible and that can be a stretch at a game, is to get as close as you can. The fence is about as close as most can get and I understand that. 

The last thing I want to harp on and I harp on this a lot is end of game group shots. Here is a great example of what I am talking about below. 

I chose this photo off of Google so I wouldn't offend anyone but I put up arrows to indicate where some of the players are looking and they are not looking at the main camera. From this photo I guess there were probably at least 2 other photographers, probably with cell phone cameras shooting from the side distracting the players. And what do you get?  A really crappy group shot. 

Don't be the person who shoots from the side and distracts the players. Let one person shoot and have them share with the rest of you so all the players are looking in one direction.