North Carolina’s Gavin Petracca with a behind the back goal against Maryland in March 2007. Sweet.

Just two months after I graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill I was driving to my parent’s house in Virginia. They live in a rural area where the roads are full of twists and turns, not to mention animals. Just before midnight as my car was at the top of a hill about to head down I spotted an animal in the road. My (bad) instincts took over and I swerved the car to miss the animal. What happened after that is a blur. It probably only took a few seconds, but it felt like an hour. I lost control of my car as it fish-tailed down the road. Whether I was going forwards or backwards, left or right was a mystery to me; I had no sense of where I was going. At one point I saw that my car was going through a patch of kudzu, glowing bright green from my high beams inches from them, but I could not see the road. For those briefs seconds, I thought my life had reached it’s end. Moments later my car came to a rest. The engine had cut off but the CD player was still playing Sugar Ray’s “Falls Apart” (ironic title given the circumstances and that part of the lyrics are “runaway, runaway”). I cut the ignition off immediately worried the car would explode. After I turned the ignition off I realized my car was on laying on the driver’s side. Still worried the car would explode with me in it, I quickly unbuckled the seat belt, climbed up to the passenger’s door, pushed the door up and walked onto the top of the passenger’s side of the car. Now I tried to figure of which side of the car I should jump from, not sure if the car would fall down on me once I jumped. I think I finally decide to jump towards the side of the car where the bottom faced out. My hope was the wheels would help keep the car from falling back and even if it did, the wheels would help prevent the entire force of the car from falling on me. After all was said and done, I learned my car went down an 12 foot drop from the road rolling about 2 revolutions in the process.

A few days later I cried as what had happened really crystallized in my head. I was real close to death or being paralyzed. Despite this, I have always told my family and close friends that the wreck was the best thing that ever happened to me. I used the money from the insurance to buy my first place when I was living in Washington, DC. But more so, I learned lessons in life that I could have never learned otherwise. I learned not to take life so seriously and appreciate every day I had. Before little things had bothered me but not anymore. Being able to walk on my own, see my family and friends were what really mattered to me. I thanked God for teaching me the most important lesson I’ve ever learned in my life and promised Him I would always remember it.

This weekend was another reminder of the lesson I learned. After being upset at the UNC men’s basketball team loosing to Georgetown, we all learned the next day that Jason Ray, who portrayed the UNC mascot “Ramses” died in New Jersey after being hit by a car outside of the hotel where he was staying. Ray was in New Jersey with the UNC Basketball team for the regional being held there. Ray’s death reminds us what loss really is. Sports in the end are trivial; they are just games and aren’t life and death. That UNC game loss looks small now. I never met Ray; I only saw him backstage at basketball games. But today I pray for him and his family.

I was in Durham last year when the North Carolina Men’s Lacrosse team played at Duke. UNC racked up points left and right going on a 6-0 run and made Duke look like a high school team. But in the 2nd quarter, Duke’s offense came to life and went on a 11-2 scoring tear, beating UNC 11-8 in the end.

Saturday UNC and Duke met again and the storyline was eerily familiar. UNC again bolts to a big lead, this time 6-1. After making it 6-1, UNC would not score again until Duke scored another score to make the score 7-5. But worse for UNC, that lone goal to make it 7 at 12:12 in the 3rd quarter would be our last as Duke would make 4 unanswered goals to make the final 7-9.I don’t know why, but this game was hard to photograph. Sometimes you have games that are as easy as shooting fish in a barrel. But this game didn’t provide a ton of good photographic moments.

Here are my photos of Duke Lacrosse at North Carolina.

UNC Men’s lacrosse has already won 50% more games here at the halfway point of the season, than they won all last year. Last year they were 4 and 10. Now they are 6 and 1.

UNC beat the Vermont Catamounts 13-6 Tuesday afternoon on Fetzer Field (yeah, I know this posting is way late. But hey, I’ve had things to do). As Dave Lohse, sports information director for UNC men’s lacrosse (and cool guy) wrote:

Carolina’s defense was smothering all afternoon and statistically the Tar Heels held a huge edge in virtually every category. But 18 saves by Vermont’s Daryl Swarts was a key in the game never really getting out of hand in the Tar Heels’ favor.

Of note, 69% of the goals were scored by freshman; the remaining by sophomores.

Tomorrow the guys will play Dook Duke who was (until a few weeks ago) ranked number one in the Inside Lacrosse poll (which right now is cursed; all the teams ranked #1 on the list lost their next match after being ranked #1; Dook Duke included). A win tomorrow for UNC will be tough; but it would make one hell of a statement about the program should they win.

Until then, here are photos of UNC Lacrosse v. Vermont.

Game one of NC State baseball vs. VA Tech was rained out. The team will have a double header on Saturday. So Brackman and Surkamp start on Saturday; Stallings on Sunday. I was hoping Sunday would be the double header as I need to get some photos of Surkamp.

The team did some light practice and hanging out today.

Here some random photos from the day.

Watching NCAA Tournament on TV in the Player’s Lounge.

At the batting cages…

In the training room, players discuss trades for their fantasy baseball team…

Update (11:53pm): Here is a gallery with more photos.

Last Saturday’s game was supposed to be the “Lock of the Week” according to Inside Lacrosse. Notre Dame’s men’s lacrosse team was suppose to beat North Carolina; seems the boys at UNC didn’t get the memo. With a dominating 2nd and 3rd quarter, the Tar Heels beat the Fighting Irish 11-8 on Fetzer Field. In 2006, UNC managed only to win 4 games all season. Thus far they are 5-1 with 7 regular season games to go. The Heels looked solid in their freshmen. There are so many new faces that I didn’t recognize half the players out on the field. That says a lot of great things about their future. It is great to see this team get back to it’s winning ways. I felt an excitement and enthusiasm in the players Saturday that I have not felt from them in a long time.

As always, here are some photos of UNC Lacrosse v. Notre Dame.

When you score so many points in an inning that the scoreboard is unable to display the total number of runs scored, you know a team is getting walloped. In this case, NC State scored 13 points in the fifth inning. The scoreboard, only able to display a single digit for each inning, just alternated flashing “1″ and “3″.

Today I did get a few photos from the Brackman project, but for the most part, I shot the game and afterwards photographed other team members post-game when they went to lift.

Here is a link to my photos of NCSU baseball vs Maryland from Sunday that I took. It has some game photos, random photos of Brack and photos in Weisiger-Brown’s weight room. I also hope to soon be able to make a game that Eric Surkamp is pitching. Every time he starts I have been booked at another location.

Coming soon I hope to get post photos of UNC men’s lacrosse upset win over Notre Dame on Saturday.

Note: This was posted on Monday, March 12th, but refers to the game on Sunday, March 11th.

Updated 3/12 at 11:21pm: Added Jeremy Synan photo

After today’s NCSU game vs. Maryland, while the team met in the locker room, I ventured to the dug out to take some random photos to test out my new 50mm 1.2L lens. I was blown away at the depth-of-field of the lens and how shallow I could make the photos. Here are some photos of NC State Baseball vs Maryland. The last 4 are with the new lens. The photo of the bats really shows off this lens’ incredible ability to blur backgrounds smoothly.

While posted on March 8^th, these photos are actually from March 7^th. Last night I had to play catch-up on editing and sending photos off to clients. So I didn’t get time to write in this journal, blog or whatever it should be called.

After a two-week hiatus on the project, I returned back to Doak Field to get back to work on the project. The Pack was playing North Carolina A&T in a mid-week stand. I didn’t arrive until about the 4^th inning and didn’t even bother bringing my longer focal length lenses (that is, a lens that ‘zooms in far’) to photograph the game; instead opting for wider lenses instead.

I brought with me a brand new lens I bought a week ago – the Canon 50mm 1.2L. I have been eyeing this lens for some time and thought this project would provide an excuse to finally buy it. It was about $1,500 but has proved its worth so far. At f/1.2 it really “opens up” and lets me shoot in darker situations. Plus, it’s sharp and with its circular aperture has excellent background blur. All the pictures taken below were taken with the new lens.

I didn’t take that many photos today and really did not get anything too striking. I was pretty disappointed in the take. Part of that is because I’m starting to run dry on ideas of good photos to take when we are always in the same environment: club house, weight room, etc. I am going to have to figure out some new locations to shoot to mix it up; or rather, go with him to other places which can be tough because I don’t want to get in his way. But, even when shooting in the same environment, sometimes fun things do happen. For example, last pic below has Brack and Andrew Taylor trying to pull in Joey Cutler into the pool at Weisiger-Brown. Unfortunately this happened so fast and the lens I had on the camera at the time was my new 50mm when what I needed was a wider lens. So it’s a little too cropped.

Shutter Actuations

• Pictures taken today: 133
• Previous total: 2,019
• Total Pictures taken for project to date: 2,152
  

Hours spent on project:

• Hours today spent shooting: 3.25 hrs
• Today’s Post production: 1.5 hrs
• Previous Hours: 33.75 hrs
• Total Hours to Date: 38.5 hrs (19.25% of 200 hr estimate)

CBS Sportsline listed Jimmy V’s celebration after winning the NCAA Tournament, now 24 years ago, as the number 2 most memorable moment in college basketball.

… [O]ne day you look up, see the date and realize Jim Valvano hasn’t coached in 17 years, hasn’t been alive in nearly 14.

Maybe it seems strange because we still see him on TV every once in a while telling us not to give up, not to ever give up, a visibly sick man who would succumb to cancer less than two months after delivering his legendary speech. Either way, 14 years feels like a long time, particularly because it means it has been 24 years since Valvano made the most famous jog by a coach ever.

If that was #2, I can’t wait to see what #1 will be.

You can read more here.