After an unusually slow 0-2 start, Floyd County High School’s championship caliber varsity girls’ basketball team is back on track, rolling over opponents and, hopefully, on their way to another appearance at the state finals in Richmond. With the return of high scoring Lindsey Thompson (left), back from knee surgery and already sporting a band-aid from the rough and tumble play that marks FCHS girls’ basketball, and veteran players like Molly Brown (above) and Britney Avancini (below), the Lady Buffs avenged an early season loss against Christiansburg earlier this week by beating the Blue Demons on their home court 58-53.
If you haven’t come out to see the Lady Buffs play, you should. They storm the court with fast, agressive action, wearing down opponents with a opressive pace and a full-court press that is the trademark of coach Alan Cantrell.
They play raw, in-your-face, tough basketball — a style that has sent them to the state finals for the past two years.
They never let up. It’s full-court, full-pressure, full-time basketball.
Roger:
Sports photographers use two secret weapons: Fast glass and fast cameras
Fast glass means a lens with an maximum aperture of f/2.8 or greater. The photos above were taken with Canon’s f/2 135mm fixed focal length lens. This allowed me to shoot at shutter speeds of 1/500th of a second or better at ISO 1600 in the Floyd County High School gym.
Fast cameras means a digital SLR body with a high-frame rate. For example, my Canon EOS-1D Mark III shoots at 10 frames per second. I also use a Canon EOS-40D which shoots at 6 frames per second. Both camera bodies have excellent high ISO capability with low noise.
For indoor sports like basketball or volleyball I’ll generally use any of four lenses:
Fixed focal length lenses like the 135 or the 300 are sharper than the zooms but all of Canon’s L series lenses are sharp.
For football, soccer or track events, I add a 400mm f/2.8 to the mix.