Pattie's Photo Blog

Hockey and indoor soccer

Last Friday the Renegades played at home and dropped their fourth consecutive game, this one a 5-2 loss to Knoxville. It was ugly. This is a shot of Scott Corbett scoring the first goal of the game.

The next afternoon, Richmond Hockey Fights Cancer sponsored a blood drive before their Saturday night game, which was dedicated to the team's former coach, who died of cancer in the past year. I wasn't able to attend the game, but I did donate blood for the first time since I got back from Iraq. As a side note, while I was deployed, the local blood service organization kept calling my house and asking me to make an appointment. I sent them an email to explain I was deployed, and to please stop calling my house until I got home, and they did. So when I got home, I called, but was told I was automatically deferred from donating blood for one full year to the day I left Iraq because of the high rate of malaria in the country. Kuwait was OK, and there is no deferral for that. But (and sorry for the digression), the military felt that the malaria rate in Iraq was low enough that we did not get malaria medication. So are the blood people overly cautious, or did the military take unnecessary risks with our health?

So back to the present, I never heard from the blood service people, so I hope that my donation will get me back on the phone/email list, since I don't mind donating blood, but sometimes I need a bit of a nudge to make an appointment to donate.

Finally, I couldn't go to the RHFC game that night because a friend and I went up to Fredericksburg to see the Fredericksburg Generals play in the Premier Arena Soccer League (PASL) semifinals. I think five of the Generals players played for the Richmond Kickers last summer, so it was neat seeing them play again. The Generals won 11-4 (I thought it was 12-4, but I must have been wrong). I've seen arena/indoor soccer on TV before, but this was my first live game, and it was a lot of fun -- very fast and high-scoring. It was a challenge to shoot because of the relatively low light and the speed, not to mention lack of a dedicated photographer's booth, but I really enjoyed it. With the win, the Gens advanced to their division (conference?) finals, which will be played next Saturday in Charlotte. Good luck, guys!

Labels: soccer

posted by Pattie A. @ 10:52 PM