Army West Point Athletics
Friday, May 7 - Good Times, Past and Present
May 07, 2010 | General
Good morning Army fans and what a beautiful day it is if you are in upstate New York where a cold front is suppose to bring snow to some areas but not where the Army softball team is playing. Hamilton, N.Y. will host a pair of key games today in the Black Knights' quest for the Patriot League's regular-season title.
When you have been around as long as I (Mady Salvani) have, you can say "yes I was there the last time Army won the regular-season title. If you don't know I will tell you - it was 1992 and I wasn't young then either. The league had started during the 1990-91 season and Army captured the title that year with a perfect 12-0 mark and went 11-1 repeating in 1992. Back then everyone made the Patriot League Tournament and the venue was Patriots Park in Pa. It was like an old homecoming as everyone greeted each other. The sad part was when a team left; lucky for me I always got to stay to the end.
Todd Newcomb, who is an administrator at Bucknell, was a young kid starting out then working for the league office when the tournament was played at Patriots Park. We worked together doing the stats and no matter what we called, a coach sitting in front of this tiny both we worked out of would turn around and tell us we were wrong. So a long time ago I learned to go with my gut instincts. If I am not certain, I will listen to both sides of the argument, but I think some folks could argue that a clean hit is an error.
The best part about Patriots Park was the food. To me it was like the Ritz Hotel; you could have hot dogs, hamburgers, potato chips, Philly cheese steak and ice cream. I always felt I died and went to heaven during those times.
Well I am hoping that history repeats itself today in Hamilton, N.Y., as the team looks to capture the regular-season softball title under a young and talented first-year coach in Michelle DePolo who has an awesome staff in Kate Stake, Stacy Birk and Alex Heidenberg. The field has been decided with Lehigh, Bucknell and Colgate. The advantages of Army hosting the tournament is having a press box that provides both heat and air conditioning (which I rarely put on because I get cold) plus lights.
Today in Hamilton, N.Y., I will be tweeting (I don't if that is the correct word but it rhythms with Tweaty Bird and that is how I remember it) with regular-updates throughout the games along with doing live stats. If there is long pause it is because I am taking a few action shots.
On an other subject, yesterday Dallas was talking about the new technology. Well yesterday I went back to my roots sending out form letters the old fashion way - not by e-mail but the Post Office. I had to type the names but not on a typewriter like in the past, but on my computer and onto a sheet of labels. Time saving because if you need those names again, you don't have to retype like in the old days.
Then we had to make copies of the four-page insert, fold and insert into the envelopes. When I first started in SIO (Sports Information), which today we call ourselves the Athletic Communications Office, we would have mailings of close to 1,000 envelopes a week. The Xerox copy machine wasn't yet invented. In the beginning it was stencils and ditto master (which you don't want to know about) but later we had copies made at the Printing Plant on post. Back then it would take an extra day to collate so I would pick up the pages at night, spread the 20-pages on the office floor and collate and staple by hand. It saved time because in the morning we had to send out about 700 of them with the rest going to coaches, local press along with the press box. So I did enjoy taking the few minutes it took to go back to my roots, but would I want to do it all the time - NO WAY. Many things I struggle with in today's modern technology (but I have great co-workers who help me out all the time), but many things I am in favor of.
