Boot camp

October 17, 2009; Jamfest

I was scheduled to shoot the Maine South football game in Park Ridge Saturday for CoachesAid.com but I got an e-mail on Friday letting me know they did not need the game.

With an open Saturday I had a choice to hang out at home and get ready for an out of town trip or go to Peoria to watch our cheer squads. I am still learning a bit about web design and I try to keep the 5 Star Academy website updated with current photos so I was off to Peoria.

With our first squads hitting the floor at 1 pm I left home at 7am which put me in Peoria just before noon. As I walked in the building I was approached by a photog who was shooting for the event company LightSpeed and he told me that 2 people had not shown up and they were looking for someone to help shoot. I have already been talking to Gil Courson of LightSpeed about helping him out with some upcoming events so I jumped in to help out.

Shooting cheerleading events is my boot camp, I figure if I can survive those days everything else is a little easier. At a big meet the days can be 10-12 hours long, shooting 100 teams or more, every routine is different and trying not to miss a kid with squads of 8 to 30 kids is a lot of work. The time to take a break to grab a bite to eat or hit the can is sometimes filled with award sessions. Oh yeah, did I mention the loud music and screaming fans?

This day was a little longer than I intended but that is a good thing. Here are 3 from the competition.

-john

All photos © John Konstantaras 2009