- November 25, 2024
-
-
Loading
Loading
Deep into the playoffs in the NHL and NBA, there are a few things that are obvious.
As teams near elimination, the intensity and competition escalates. Teams don’t want to end their seasons on a bad note, but only one team will be able to say they ended the season well.
Another noticeable part of playoffs in professional sports, especially hockey, is the coveted “playoff beard.” Most teams do it in the NHL, and even the Orlando Magic had its “Fear the Beard” campaign. (Though that didn’t work out so well.)
The whole aspect of superstition or good luck charms brings me back to something that has taken place in Flagler County sports for the past year. Or, more precisely, the amount of time I’ve been covering the sports teams in the area.
I have been a bad luck charm to the teams I have covered.
The most recent example of this goes back a few weeks ago during the softball district championship between FPC and DeLand.
Before heading out to the game, I distinctly remember telling co-worker Shanna Fortier that hopefully my run of bringing the high- school teams bad luck would end that night in Daytona Beach.
With the Lady Bulldogs holding a 6-4 lead heading into the bottom of the seventh inning, I thought to myself: Surely, this is it. I will finally stop thinking of myself as bad luck.
But the game ended in one of the craziest ways I’ve ever seen a sporting event finish, (Game 6 of the 1986 World Series was pretty crazy, too, right?), and my bad omens remained intact.
Thinking back over the past 12 months, this has happened quite a few times.
The FPC girls basketball team had a fantastic season. I covered the team in the district championship and the first round of regionals; the girls lost both games.
FPC track-and-field sent seven runners to the state meet. I wrote a feature story on them days before the meet, and they faltered.
I covered Matanzas’ Paul Ricci — who at the time had three-consecutive complete-game shutouts — and then he went out and gave up runs the next game.
I don’t like that I have this attached to me, and it probably makes the coaches not want me attending any of their games.
But hopefully things will change over the summer, and maybe the next big sporting event I go to, I’ll rock a playoff beard just for the team I’m covering!
Contact Andrew at [email protected].
