Soccer is never easy to shoot. Even when the conditions are at their best it is often difficult to get a really nice picture. When I arrived at Central Valley Christian High School in Visalia I was stunned to see how poorly the stadium was lit. I was forced to shoot at 3200 ASA and use a shutter speed of 1/250 of a second. In sports photography 1/250 is as slow as I ever shoot. Even then, most of my pictures pick up the motion of the players and the images are unusable. You just have to shot tons of pictures and hope you get something sharp enough to use in the paper.

I was pleasantly surprised when I edited my shoot and found this shot of Selma goalkeeper Simmi Nijjar stopping a shot by Central Valley Christian's Alex Paredes.

The playoff game between Selma and CVC was a classic. It took two overtimes before Selma won 3-2