Dark Horse

Seeing double

On my first episode of Daybreak, I had the pleasure of reporting on the national sports headlines for the week. My original script was virtually cut in half after it was too long. While I was preparing for the show, the U-View broadcast of Sideline was playing outside of the control room on the flat screen and I just happened to walk down the hallway when my segment from the week before was on. That was cool. I had a decent performance on Daybreak and got multiple compliments again.

Thursday afternoon I got to listen to the vice president of marketing at IMG, the global leader in sports and entertainment representation and branding speak. It was interesting and informative and really cool to hear the marketing side of the business and see what goes into branding and promoting an athlete. The presentation concluded with the death crawl scene from "Facing The Giants," to motivate us to succeed in life or whatever. I don't know, I just love that scene.

I also received a much anticipated email on Thursday. I applied to be a conversation partner through the ELS Center for international students. The email included an acceptance into the program and my assigned conversation partner. I will have the opportunity to meet with a foreign student for one hour every week and just talk to him to familiarize him with the English language. His name is Fahad Alshmari. I am planning on meeting with him for the first time today.

I am now involved with three separate intramural teams. A 5-5 basketball team, a 3-3 basketball team and now a flag football team. I was unable to attend 3-3 last week because I went to the Red Sox @ Pirates game on Wednesday night. I scored 22 points in my team's 69-57 loss in my 5-5 game, including 3 three-pointers to start the second half.

At the Pirate game, I got to see one of the Pirate's top prospects Josh Bell up close along with the

Josh Bell signing autographs

My seats in section 108

entire Clemente family outside of the dugout before the game that the Pirates would win 9-1. Oh, and my roommate caught a foul ball that bounced off of the glove of the man sitting directly in front of me. If he wouldn't have been there, I would have had a chance at the ball. That was intense though. Oh, and I got to see Boston's David Ortiz take batting practice and crush 10 balls over the Clemente wall with ease. That man can hit a baseball "wicked fah."

The Clemente family poses with
Pirate's minor league community
service leaders

I showed up to flag football on Friday morning at the Greentree Sportsplex alone and looking for a team. We played 5-5 instead of 7-7 due to the number of missing players. It is a 6 team league that is made up of Point Park students. I was put on a team with all junior and seniors, the one I swear could crush me if he touched me with his pinkie finger but has the heart of a teddy bear.

I caught the game's first touchdown pass and then intercepted the first pass from the other team and ran it back for a touchdown. That's when they noticed me and gave me the nickname "Dark Horse." I embraced the nickname and contributed to our team's dominating first win of the season.

The second game we played a team made up of entirely soccer players. Fast soccer players. They
were up by three touchdowns at one point when we started to rally. We forced a turnover and proceeded to score to pull within two touchdowns. I caught a deep pass with three guys covering me in the end zone to pull us within one touchdown. An interception by our team then gave us possession with four plays remaining. (There is no game clock, we get a certain number of plays in a game instead). We eventually scored and sent the game to overtime.

We played college overtime rules, which means each team gets the chance to score. The other team got the ball first and scored easily, but failed the conversion to put us in the drivers seat. With only two plays left, they put their entire secondary on our best receiver and left me guarded by their biggest (and slowest) player. I recognized the mismatch, told our QB, and looked for the screen pass. I got the pass and had to take it the length of the field. I put a move on the big guy covering me and won the foot chase to the end zone to tie the game. After we scored, we could win the game with a successful conversion. Our QB rolled out to the left, I set a pick on a defender trying to sack the QB, and rolled out and caught the wide open pass for the win.

The Rugby team celebrates the victory over CMU

That was fun. Sorry for the extreme details there, it was just too good not to document. I still can't move my legs well after two hours of that. I'm not kidding. I can't get my knee on my bed and I struggle with stairs. Google told me that I have an overuse injury? Okay google. I just need Bio-Freeze and bananas.

Friday night I covered the rugby game at Carnegie Mellon University and what a game it was. Point Park defeated rival CMU who had topped them in each of the past three seasons by the final score of 5-0. It was close, intense, chippy and exciting. I think the story that I write for this game will be my best one yet.

My seat for Penguins training camp

On Saturday, I met up with Emily and we went with a few of my friends to the Penguins open training camp practice. We then got lunch afterwards and I went back to my room and finished writing my rugby story.

I've been writing so much that I don't even know how to feel about it. I love it and it is so rewarding but it is tedious and thought provoking at the same time. Every paper that I have written so far has received the same comments about not staying focused on the topic. I love tangents but I have to keep them out of my writing. My journalistic writing has been great and I love writing my scripts for TV, but having these other classes making me write papers is screwing me up. I'll deal. I'm in the process of re-writing a paper on cheating for english composition.

The new jerseys the Pens will
wear this year went on sale
and I bought this shirt because
why not?

Despite my hectic schedule, I do have a lot of downtime. A lot more than I thought I would. Heck, I'm still keeping up with this blog. I'm going to create a separate post with updates and links to my work that I've done including Sideline, Daybreak and my pieces in the Globe newspaper.

I'm staying busy, but not too busy. I'm having fun but not too much fun. I'm involved, but not too involved. Okay, maybe that last one was a lie.

I have nothing else to say but I do have an English paper to write about cheating. Maybe I could get somebody to write it for me. Now THAT would be ironic. (Cheating on a paper about cheating, for those who didn't catch that...)

I'll be making the trip back to Butler this Friday for alumni night and spending the weekend at home. For now though, I'm here to stay.

Because, why not?
Josh