I headed over to Standley Lake High School on Thursday night to shoot the basketball game between the Gators and visiting Legacy High School.  The Lake was the first school I shot for MaxPreps this year covering Girls Softball in August.  But this was the first time I had been in their gym, which is nicknamed “The Swamp”

Walking into the Swamp for the first time I was concerned.  It appeared that there was not going to be any good place to mount my strobes for the game.  on one side of the gym, the bleachers went wall to wall with no good location to clamp, and walking up the bleachers on the other side of the gym, the whole bleachers shook with every step.

I clamped one strobe to the shaky bleacher side, and used a light stand taped to the wall on the other side of the gym.  On one side I was able to plug my strobe into the wall, but on the other side I had to use a battery pack to power my strobe.  Getting my strobes pointed was not to big a deal, but once they were pointed, in the locations I chose to place them, I had to deal with people standing up and blocking them, or worse, walking up the bleachers and causing them to move or change direction.  Luckily, for the most part they stayed in one place.

Let me tell you, nicknaming the gym at Standley Lake the Swamp was right on.  It was warm and humid in the gym.  Not a comfortable place to be for too long.  I broke into a sweat as soon as I stepped into the gym.  I felt sorry for the Lake mascot pictured bellow.  I noticed every so often he was just sitting on the bleachers, probably burning up on the inside of the outfit.

The game was pretty good.  Legacy and Standley Lake matched up pretty well.  There was never a team with a clear advantage the whole night.  After one quarter, Lake had a 3 point lead, and after the second quarter they lead by 4.

In the second half though, the rolls reversed.  Legacy was able to make up the 4 point difference in the 3rd quarter and both teams scored 9 points in the 4th quarter which meant we were headed into overtime in the Swamp.

It looked like the Gators were going to be able to handle Legacy in the extra period with plays like bellow, an nice break-a-way two handed dunk, but in fact, it was Legacy that got their second wind in the extra frame, outscoring Standley Lake 12-9.

It was a good game, it was too bad that Lake could not pull it off in front of the home crowd.  The fans were really into the spirit of cheering for their team, but it just was not enough.

To view and purchase photos from this game, please head over to MaxPreps.