Kicking off the Prep Rally pep rally
Welcome to Prep Rally, your new bloggable home for high school sports. There are plenty of questions to ask, so I'll try to sort through a few of them for you right off the bat:
Question: Why do I need to read a high school sports blog?
Answer: Given the sheer number of high school sports teams, often crazy coaches, amazing trick shots and disputed rivalry matches resurrected years after they were originally played, how could you not read a high school sports blog?
Q: So, what am I going to read at Prep Rally?
A: The best high school sports stories out there. If it's circulating around the world-wide internets, we'll find it and bring it to your attention. And if we haven't found a story you thought was great, yell at me and send me the link at either preprallyblog@gmail.com or on Twitter at @camasmith.
Q: Why does the moon revolve around the sun?
A: It doesn't. The moon revolves around the earth, kept in orbit by the earth's gravitational pull. But the earth revolves around the sun, so the moon kind of gets stuck on the same roundtrip journey.
Q: Why are you the guy blogging about high school sports?
A: Well, in addition to amassing knowledge of the solar system, I've spent most of my career trotting across high school fields, chasing after athletes, coaches and -- more than once -- mascots. I spent the past three years with The Washington Post, but I missed the wild and wooly world of high school sports (and mascots), so I'm here to bring it to you, hopefully with a bit of commentary you'll find interesting. And if you don't find it interesting, feel free to fire that commentary off at the email and Twitter handle above, too.
Q: Alright, so what were your most harrowing moments covering prep sports?
A: That's easy: The all-encompassing fear of being crushed by offensive lineman Michael Oher while conducting this interview during my first stint with Rivals.com. That or getting a phone call months into my first job from a school board member in Lake Oswego who claimed they were investigating Kevin Love's first high school coach because of comments he made to me in this feature.
Q: If you were a character from a Disney movie, which would you be?
A: Winnie the Pooh, for sure. That bear had it figured out. Still, I can't be the only one with the suspicion he was running drugs or moonshine out of Rabbit's house, can I? There's no way he could afford that tree-side pad without a serious cash injection. Have you seen what houses go for in the Hundred Acre Woods?
Q: Since you seem to be into them, what was your high school's mascot?
A: A "Maroon" named "Mr. Maroo". When I was in school we were taught that he was a "dustbunny," but the official school site now lists him as a mutant transmorph with extraterrestial parents. Really. I'm not buying it. He always seemed way to effete to be a mutant transmorph to me.
Q: What's your favorite color?
A: Red.
Alright, I think this faux interview is getting a little too atopical, even for this blog. Here's what we're going to do: If you have any other questions about the blog, me, or why you should be reading it, send them to preprallyblog@gmail.com or @camasmith. Or just post them in the comments section below. I'll try to answer as many as possible, and will loop the best ones back in to a post later today. In the meantime, check back soon for a lot more news and opinion about what's going on in high school sports.
