The time Taylor Swift met me (oh yeah, and a Madison preview)
 |
| Look how excited Taylor Swift was to meet me. |
Ok, I got all the Taylor Swift stuff out of my system and I was able to fill the blank space on the page with a good paragraph of her song titles. Today was a fairytale for Swifties as she got engaged. (Well, she and Travis Kelce announced it on Tuesday.) Look what you made me do, Taylor. I'm chasing trends in a blog about third division soccer. It'll be a fortnight before I forgive myself and I'm sure it will result in bad blood among my readers. It's probably karma for me never writing about how Taylor Swift met me!
Oh, you want that tale? It's not a love story. Never in my wildest dreams did I think it would be such an enduring story. Ready for it?
They year was 2007 and I'm a fulltime reporter for the Statesboro Herald at the time. Country music superstar Brad Paisley is coming to play at Georgia Southern and I'm tasked with covering the event which is as sweet a job as it sounds. Talk to a few people to get their reactions ("I'm so excited to see him." "I can't believe he's playing in Statesboro," stuff like that.) We had someone else writing up the music side of it so I just had to talk to some of the crowd, get official attendance numbers and knock out a story.
I was familiar with Paisley, but I was not (and am still not) a big country music guy. I'm aware enough of the big names and just by virtue of living in the rural south, I'm sure I can hum a few of the biggest hits on the radio just by being out and about. While Paisley was the headliner, he had some other opening acts performing that night as well. At the time the one I was probably most excited about seeing was Kellie Pickler, the former contestant on American Idol. Like everyone around that time, we were avid Idol watchers so seeing Pickler was kind of exciting.
There were two other opening acts before Paisley performed. One was a guy named Jack Ingram, who was a draw for at least one person in attendance that night. The other was a young, up-and-coming country music artist by the name of Taylor Swift. A guy at work knew of her as he was in a local band and knew lots about music, but I'd never heard of her.
Her set was fine though I really couldn't tell you anything about it. I'm pretty sure she played "Teardrops on my Guitar" and a few others. After she finished her final song she said she'd be up on the concourse of the stadium after the concert to meet fans and take pictures with anyone who wanted to meet her.
My wife was out of town that night and by the midpoint of Paisley's set I'd finished my article and sent it off to my editor and I didn't really have anything else going on. Why not go meet her and get a photo? The alternative was going home and watching tv alone and that didn't sound all that appealing. After the show, I go get in line to get Jack Ingram's autograph. After that, I make my way to the back of the Taylor Swift line. I can't tell you how long I waited, but they did let people in line hold her Country Music Association award while we moved closer. I do know I was near the back. Not the very last person, but there were probably only a dozen or so behind me.
Eventually I make my way to the front of the line. I get Swift to sign my media credential and then pose for a photo with whatever cheap phone I had at the time. The whole thing took maybe 45 seconds. I made my way back to my house and didn't really think too much about it.
Six months later, Taylor Swift blows up into one of the biggest country stars and then makes her shift to take over the pop charts a few years later. Any time she would win an award, I'd change my facebook profile to the photo of both of us. She's had enduring popularity to the point that I still get to impress kids and teenagers by saying I met her. My nephews (ages 10 and 8) were shocked when they learned earlier this year that I'd met her. I'm teaching a college class this Fall and students in there demanded I show them the picture at the top of the blog as proof that we'd met.
I'm sure Swift still tells her friends and family about how she once met the proprietor of Stormwatch912 and regrets that she doesn't have a photo of that moment. Call me Taylor and we can certainly arrange that. I'll even let you write a guest post if you want.
Hopefully I met the requested deadline of the excellent Dan Creel.
One day, maybe Callum Stretch or Mason Tunbridge or Niall Reid-Stephen will blow up into a famous soccer star and I'll be able to point back to when I interviewed them after a game winning goal against the likes of Forward Madison.
Speaking of Madison, they come calling on Saturday as Tormenta is back home after spending most of August away from the friendly confines of Tormenta Stadium. Tormenta went 1-2-1 on their four game swing, including going 1-1-1 since Ian Cameron stepped down and Mark McKeever took over as interim manager.
Saturday will mark Mark's first home game as the head man in charge at Tormenta. Did I write that sentence specifically to say "mark Mark's first home game"? I absolutely did and I have no regrets, even as it would likely get my English teacher from high school frustrated with me.
In his "The Back Four" newsletter, John Morrissey had a detailed breakdown of Tormenta under McKeever, which saw them come out in a 3-4-3 formation. Certainly this is worth your time if you're trying to understand what Tormenta is doing differently under McKeever. With the understanding that it's still a very small sample, Tormenta has a positive xG (0.01) at full strength under McKeever while South Georgia had a negative xG (-5.34) under Cameron.
Madison is coming off a dominating 3-0 win over Texoma Wednesday night that has them in 11th place and just two points off the playoff line. Tormenta, meanwhile, is in 13th place, but just four points out of the final playoff spot. As we talked about last time, it's a jumble at the bottom of the playoff race with seven teams within five points of the final two spots. All of which makes Saturday's contest a big one as a win by either team is going to put them in the think of the hunt.
Madison topped Tormenta back on July 23 in a game in which they only had one shot on target. They, obviously, had other chances, but nope, it was just the one on target shot that went in, giving them a 1-0 win. Since that game, they had been winless, losing to Birmingham Legion in the Jagermeister Cup and going 0-2-3 before their win against Texoma Wednesday night.
Saturday will be Madison's seventh game in August and yes, there are five Saturdays this month, but still, that's seven games in 28 days. Tormenta, meanwhile, will only play six games in August. (He says "only" like that's also not a lot.)
Tormenta will be without the services of Gabriel Alves on Saturday as he'll be serving a one game suspension for a red card he picked up against Chattanooga. You have to think that if Yaniv Bazini's shot early in the match had bounced off the post and in rather than out and Alves didn't get a (probably deserved) red card, the Chattanooga game could have gone differently. But, alas, it did not and Tormenta find itself where it is and needing a win.
Kickoff is set for 7:30 and will be the first of back-to-back home matches for South Georgia as they'll host Knoxville on September 6.
News and Notes:
Whatever you thought you were doing, Sporting Cascades FC, this ain't it.
You know what, we're skipping the rest of the news and notes. Sporting Cascades FC used an AI graphic for their branding release and even with that seemed to mess up as their scarfs don't even say Sporting Cascades. What are we even doing here? And then to delete comments asking about the use of AI when people understandably questioned that decision? Get all the way out of here with that. I enjoyed the one person who referred to them as "dorkass Chat GPT FC" and the other who asked if their marketing was so bad that they couldn't find four actual humans to hold up a scarf? Just no. Do better, Sporting Cascades FC.
Comments
Post a Comment