Rare day off turned into busy Saturday

Sometimes its fun to do something a little different.
With all of the local high school sports teams departed from the tournament, I found myself with an open Saturday. It coincided with the gymnastics state finals.
Over the years I haven’t typically attended state championships in which a Jay County, Fort Recovery or South Adams athlete was not participating. But it is always fun to see sports contested at the highest level.
The bonus for the gymnastics state finals is that it didn’t requite a trip to Indianapolis. The meet was just down the road in Muncie at Ball State University’s Worthen Arena.
So early last week I tracked down the list of state finalists, found the Indiana newspapers that would likely be covering them and sent an email. I was willing to freelance as a writer or photographer for any of them.
Then, silence.
I didn’t hear anything back until Wednesday when sports editor Grady Tate of the Connersville News-Examiner called. He wanted help, but he needed to ask how much I was going to charge for my services and get it approved by those who control the money.
Given that he only wanted a couple of photos of the Spartans’ lone gymnast, I told him they would be free of charge. It was a favor for a colleague that continues a long-standing pattern. I’ve written from the News-Examiner office many times following Jay County games at Connersville, and Grady has been in The CR office doing the same.
The assignment wasn’t much, but it gave me a reason to be at Worthen. As it turned out, it was just the beginning.
Thursday afternoon an email came from The Times, a Munster paper with the second-largest circulation in the state trailing only the Indianapolis Star. It was interested in hiring me to provide 10 photos from the state finals from a list of schools and individuals in its coverage area.
I quickly accepted the assignment.
Then, while I was at Thursday’s Jay County Plan Commission meeting, another email came in. The Herald-Times, Bloomington’s daily newspaper, wondered if it could contract with me for a few photos and a story about Owen Valley, a squad that included defending all-around state champion Anna Watkin.
I accepted again.
Suddenly I went from having nothing to do to having a busy day of gymnastics ahead of me. It was busier than I even expected.
Typically at a gymnastics meet, my focus is entirely on one team — Jay County. I pay some attention to the rest of the meet, but ultimately it’s the Patriots I’m going to take photos of and write about.
At the state finals Saturday, I was covering four teams and another three individual athletes. The biggest challenge was that three teams — defending state champion Valparaiso, Crown Point and Owen Valley — were all leading off rotations. That means when Crown Point opened the day on the vault, Owen Valley was performing on the balance beam while at the opposite end of the gym Valparaiso was competing on the floor exercise.
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Chesterton, Kylee Maxwell of Morgan Township, Heather Osorio of Merrillville and Kylee Elleman of Connersville were easier to keep up with because they were later in rotations.
I wasn’t able to take photos of every athlete of every event for all the teams I was covering, but I got most of them. And I got to see some spectacular gymnastics.
Columbus North set a state record score of 114.85 to deny Valparaiso a third consecutive state title. My assignments included a story and photos of the floor exercise state champion — Watkin — and the vault state champion — Maxwell. Watkin also earned medals on the beam and vault, and Maxwell was third on the floor, fifth on the bars and second in the all-around.
Five other athletes — freshman Whitney McKeon (beam, all-round), sophomore Jenna Algozine (beam) and senior Sydney Intagliata (bars), all of Valparaiso, freshman Jordan Bush (bars, floor) of Chesterton and senior Lainey Kowalczyk (vault) of Crown Point — on my photo list earned state medals. By my count, that’s 14 state medals total.
It was a fun set of assignments. It was a good feeling to have my work spread beyond the Jay County area to other parts of the state.
But at the same time it made me wish Jay County had an athlete competing, following in the footsteps of Hannah Williams, Nadlie Runyon, Katie Snyder and Lizzy Schoenlein. Having a hometown athlete in competition always takes being at the state finals to a different level.