It's all over

The Massachusetts women's soccer team concluded over the weekend with two losses to extend its losing streak to five games. Aside from a feature on Vanessa Lima, I have one more interview with Coach Rudy, which will help me write a column and David Brinch write a season review on the team. Brinch wrote a piece on all the seniors finishing their careers while I wrote the wrap, which quite frankly, is irrelevant considering how the team was doing lately. What the game was really about was watching Coach Rudy's favorite or at least one of his favorite senior classes play their last game for UMass. 

If I was to talk about my favorite memory at UMass this semester, it would have to be one of the women's soccer games I went to. I can't remember the last time I actually had fun covering a team. Covering a team always carries a significant amount of fun or else I wouldn't be doing journalism, but this was different. 

Part of it definitely had to do with working with Brinch, who is my best friend on the staff, but I always felt like I was welcomed at every game and enjoyed every second that I covered the team.

For the rest of the year, I will be doing men's basketball, which is certainly more glamorous than women's soccer, but I doubt it will be as fun. Media day was today for the basketball team and it basically consisted of me shoving a recorder in front of Coach Kellogg and Chris Lowe's face, hoping that someone else would ask the rest of the questions that I couldn't get with my one or two shots I had at asking anything.

Kellogg seems to care about the student newspaper a lot, but he's no Rudy and the cliches killed me. He couldn't be given how high-profile D1 basketball is. After interviews, I got probably the best meal I've had all semester here with steak as the main course. It was for the basketball players, media, and media relations. The truth is that there was enough food that both basketball teams and both soccer teams could have eaten at this thing and everyone would be full.

I only bring this up because last week Rudy talked to me in an interview about how upset he was that he couldn't treat the team as often as he would like because of the budget restrictions while the basketball team had lobsters. It was nice getting to have such a good meal, but that whole time I kept thinking about Rudy telling us how the budget affected how he approached meals on the road. 

I know that basketball season is going to be a good experience and is the best beat on the Collegian. But in return, I know that I'm not going to laugh as much as I did covering women's soccer.