by Aaron Selbig
After toting my trusty camera to thousands – well, hundreds, anyway – of sometimes offbeat Homer sporting events – including broomball, snow tubing and the exploits of the world-famous Homer Ice Racing Association – it’s time to call it a day.
Starting tomorrow, I will be moving from the Homer Tribune – where I’ve had a brief but very enjoyable run writing about sports like football, volleyball and city council meetings – to KBBI, where I’ve accepted a position as news director – and will hopefully still get to witness the bloodsport of city council meetings.
It’s been a fun ride covering the wacky world of Homer sports and I’ve learned some valuable skills along the way. Like how Xtra-Tufs are not suitable footwear for broomball, for instance, and how the ink in a standard ball point pen freezes at about minus five degrees.
There are many things I know I’m going to miss very much.
I have quite enjoyed learning the tricky ins and outs of sports photography, for example, and I hope to continue using my camera on subjects that require a super-fast shutter speed. Is it too early to get my two-year-old son into bobsledding?
Mostly, I’m going to miss the people I’ve met and worked with – people like Cam Wyatt, the coach of the Mariner football team and a man I’ve come to admire very much, and Chris Perk, the former Homer High athletic director who is always willing to go out of his way to help reporters with their dumb questions.
There are too many sport-minded folks in this town who have helped me along the way. I couldn’t possibly name them all, but a few are Beth Trowbridge, Buck Laukitis, Deb Lowney, Bill Bell, Allan Phelps, Doug Schweisow, Kim Duggar, Dan Deschamps, Catriona Lowe, Stacey Murphy, Rachel Lord, Anna Borland-Ivy, Megan Corazza, Dave Gilbert, Julie Barnes and Warren Waldorf.
At the Tribune, it’s been a great pleasure working with the awesome, dedicated staff – especially my fellow newsies Naomi Klouda and Sean Pearson.
There are a few things, honestly, that I won’t miss about covering sports – chief among them the long weekend hours it takes to quickly write up all of the week’s athletic goings-on over at Homer High. It’s going to be nice to have my weekends back so that I can do what comes naturally – watching sports on TV –while all the Homer coaches enjoy quiet Sunday evenings at home without worrying about me calling in the middle of dinner.
That’s somebody else’s job now.
Mine will be yapping into a microphone about the news of the day, the weather forecast for the Barren Islands, the bush lines – I’m especially looking forward to that – and the bloodsport that is city council meetings.
And who knows? Maybe some sports reporting, as well.

by Aaron Selbig
It’s been said that if you put a thousand monkeys in a room with a thousand typewriters, one of them would eventually write “Hamlet.”
But could they come up with a good sports story?
That line of thinking – one that inherently equates sportswriters with monkeys – is presumably what led a small of group of eggheads at Northwestern University to come up with Stats Monkey, a recently unveiled computer program that automatically generates sports stories based on nothing more than the stats from a game.
Basically, Stats Monkey takes the box score and play-by-play of a football, baseball or hockey game and analyzes which plays and/or players stood out and what the dominant narrative arc of the story should be. It then plugs in all the filler – key stat-lines and quotes from the coaches and/or players – and writes a story based on the “inverted pyramid” style of journalism – where the most important information appears first.
My first thought upon hearing about this fascinating new technology was “Uh oh. If this thing really works, I might soon be out of a job.” My second thought – which came about a nanosecond later – was “Man, if I had something like this, I could sleep ‘til noon everyday.”
I can identify with the Northwestern eggheads – and probably most readers of sports journalism – who think of sportswriters as mail-it-in hacks who crank out story after uninspired, cliche-laden story about the latest football, baseball or hockey game. I’ll be the first to admit it – most sportswriting is crap.
Some of it, however, is awesome. If it’s done right, a good sports story about a compelling game can be the most vivid, colorful thing in an entire newspaper.
And it’s a really, really difficult thing to do. Writing game stories about team sports, as a matter of fact, is the toughest thing to do in all of journalism. After all, how many different ways are there to say a baseball team “brought its A-game?” Or that the football team is “taking things one game at a time?” Or that the underdog hockey team “snatched victory from the jaws of defeat?”
And what about individual racing sports like swimming or cross country skiing? How many different ways are there to describe a foot race?

NEW YORK – At the New York Marathon today, some people ran faster than others.

Stats Monkey’s prefab baseball stories are only slightly more compelling. Here’s a sample story, based on statistics from an Oct. 11 playoff game between the Boston Red Sox and the Los Angeles Angels:

BOSTON — Things looked bleak for the Angels when they trailed by two runs in the ninth inning, but Los Angeles recovered thanks to a key single from Vladimir Guerrero to pull out a 7-6 victory over the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park on Sunday.
Guerrero drove in two Angels runners. He went 2-4 at the plate.
“When it comes down to honoring Nick Adenhart, and what happened in April in Anaheim, yes, it probably was the biggest hit (of my career),” Guerrero said. “Because I’m dedicating that to a former teammate, a guy that passed away.”
The Angels clinched the AL Division Series 3-0.

Certainly there are human-generated baseball stories out there that are worse than this one – two or three of them may even be mine. And the Stats Monkey’s story does seem to have all the basic, bare-bones information that a casual baseball fan would be looking for – who won, who played especially well and how the game played out.
But it’s missing one critical thing that makes or breaks any piece of writing – the human conveyance of human emotion that can only be provided by, well – a human.
So – for the time being, at least – I’m not going to worry about computer programs like Stats Monkey edging me out of a job. I’m going to keep plugging away – probably with varying degrees of success – trying to extract the human components out of sports stories and make them interesting for everyone.
And if that doesn’t work, I’m hiring me some monkeys.

As the hockey puck bounced off my skull – producing a sort of dull, hollow ring – I came to an epiphany.
In the interest of safety and the preservation of very expensive camera equipment, sports reporters/photographers – even the small town variety trying to get a killer shot of a high school hockey game – need to keep their distance from the action they cover.
It was a lesson I would soon forget.
A couple of months later, at a Mariner basketball game, there I was – snapping away crisp action shots from the safety of the bleachers with my trusty 300-millimeter zoom lens. Although I was getting some pretty awesome stuff, I couldn’t help but wonder how much awesomer my photos would be if taken from directly underneath the basket.
Nobody seemed to notice as I slinked along the baseline, slowly crawling into a position about four or five feet behind the backboard. One of the referees gave me a sort of, “What-the-hell-are-you-doing-here?” look, but I shot him back an intense, “Hey-I’m-a-reporter-and-can-do-what-I-want” stare.
Soon I was taking phenomenal, low-angle, in-your-face shots of blocks, lay-ups and intense interior defense with all the crazy facial expressions that go along with basketball played that close to the rim.
It was fantastic. I was feeling like part of the action. And then – WHAM!
My trusty 300-millimeter zoom lens had taken a knee from an out-of-control, out-of-bounds player and my camera – a new and very expensive Canon D-SLR – went flying out of my hands. Luckily, I had the neck strap attached, so the camera didn’t go skittering across the basketball court. And apparently, my trusty 300-millimeter zoom lens was tough enough to absorb the blow.
Nonetheless, it was a close call, and it really made me think about the unnecessary risks I was taking while trying to get close to the game.
Still, a good sports reporter/photographer always wants to be right there in the middle of the action. That is, after all, how you get the most amazing sports photographs and the most feel-like-you-were-there sports stories.
Which brings me to my apology to Ashley Ketelle.
I’m sorry, Ashley, that shooting pictures from the bleachers of your volleyball game against Colony the other night wasn’t good enough for me.
I’m sorry I had the misguided idea that it would be totally awesome to sit on my butt right at the edge of the court – on your side of the net, no less – and take low-angle, in-your-face shots of all the amazing digs, passes and shots you and your teammates were dishing out.
I’m sorry that an errant, deflected ball came straight for my head and I’m even sorrier that my reaction time – about that of a banana slug on Valium – was way too slow for me to get out of your way as you bravely attempted a dive to put the ball back in play.
I’m sorry I sat there, basically motionless and paralyzed with fear, while your knee – at least I think it was your knee – hit my shoulder and you went tumbling to the ground.
I’m glad you were OK, Ashley.
And I’m glad the sympathetic ref gave your team a do-over.
Still – I’m sorry I’m an idiot.
Maybe someday I’ll learn.

by Aaron Selbig

The news last week that the International Olympic Committee selected golf – along with rugby – to be added to the slate of 28 sports at the 2016 Summer Olympics left at least one golfer ecstatic.
“I think it’s great for golf. It would be an honor for anyone who plays this game to become an Olympian,” said Tiger Woods last Friday, adding that he intends to do just that in Rio in 2016.
That’s all great for Tiger and everything – lets face it, he’ll probably win – and I certainly don’t want to be the one to rain on his Olympic parade. But come on, is golf really even a sport?
Now don’t get me wrong – I like golf. I grew up in Arizona where all the local high schools had golf teams. My friends and I used to make extra money fishing golf balls out of the lake at Royal Palms Golf Course and selling them back to golfers in the parking lot. Golf is basically just a fun – if occasionally aggravating – way to get outside and go for a nice long walk.
But I have to disagree with the IOC on this one. Golf if not a sport. Rugby I can see – but not golf.
I’m sure it would be an honor for professional bowlers to be Olympians, too, but we’ll never know because the IOC – wisely – has decided that bowling just isn’t a sport. Same goes for skateboarders, bullfighters and ballroom dancers.
Sorry, losers, you’re not a sport, says the IOC – the same folks who think synchronized swimming, trampolining, rhythmic gymnastics, beach volleyball, speed walking (seriously), dressage (something about walking horses) and modern pentathlon (fencing, pistols, horses, swimming and running) are all sports.
But baseball is not.
Maybe it would be easier for the IOC to avoid controversy if they just applied the Beer Axiom when deciding what is and what isn‘t a sport.
What is the Beer Axiom?
The Beer Axiom, which I just made up, states that if one can drink beer while participating in an activity, then that activity is not a sport.
The Beer Axiom would allow for the inclusion of baseball, football, lacrosse, kickboxing, broomball and possibly softball in the Olympic Games, while ruling out beer-friendly games like bowling, billiards, bass fishing, ping pong, beer pong, shuffleboard, squash, Yahtzee, pinball, lawn darts, regular darts and pole dancing.
And golf. Sorry, Tiger.

Aaron Selbig

If my two-year-old son – who already slings a football with a laser, rocket arm – ever plays for the Homer Mariners, I may have to find a new line of work.
Reporters, you see, are supposed to be unbiased. We are to look at the world with a critical eye and cover all subjects – even sports – with a cool detachment that leaves no room for personal feelings. At least that’s what I was told at the third-rate community college I dropped out of.
In practice, however, it doesn’t always work out that way.
Raw emotions are an intrinsic part of human nature, of course, and only a mindless robot could report on sports – or the Homer City Council, for that matter – without getting swept up in the excitement every so often and having an opinion or two.
All true sports fans have opinions. If you don’t believe me, tune in to sports talk radio sometime.
Last Saturday, as I watched the Homer Mariners – a football team I’ve covered with a mostly critical eye for the last two years – put together an amazing upset victory over Kodiak, I found myself getting emotionally involved.
“Come on, Mariners!” I wanted to yell from the sidelines. “Step on their throats!”
When running back Anthony Resetarits scored the first Homer touchdown, I was overcome with the urge to run into the end zone and give him the highest-flying chest bump I could muster.
I didn’t do it, thank God, but I wanted to.
Why would I get that wrapped up in a high school football game when I don’t even have a kid on the team?
Simple.
It’s because I’ve watched that team – with a mostly critical eye – struggle for most of the last two years. Almost always outnumbered and undersized, the Mariners have suffered setbacks, injuries and humiliating defeats over and over in that time.
In a road game against Soldotna earlier this season, for example, I saw the M’s – who had high hopes of taking their game to the next level – get worked over by the seasoned champion Stars. Even though they hung with the big boys for most of the first quarter, a couple of quick scores seemed to break their will. The next thing you know, it was 33-0.
Against Kodiak on Saturday, however, I saw the Homer Mariners turn a corner. It happened in the second quarter, when they were facing a string of unlucky calls and an early 8-0 deficit. Unlike earlier in the year, the Mariners didn’t cave in – didn’t allow themselves to think, “Oh well, we’re just little old Homer. There’s no way we can win against big, bad Kodiak.”
They kept fighting, digging in their heels and showing the kind of “mojo” – as Coach Wyatt likes to call it – that makes football great.
When the Mariners came back and won that game – setting up a very winnable playoff situation at Nikiski on Saturday – I wanted to shout and scream and jump for joy and generally act in a very un-reporter-like fashion.
Just imagine if my kid was on the team.