I think the catastrophe started as soon as pen hit paper. This story wasn’t reporter all the way through.

Before the writing process can begin you have to ask yourself, “do I have every side of the story?”

The Rolling Stone had one side of the supposed events that unfolded that night — the woman, the victim. That was the main red flag for me. Before you can actually write a story, its important to make sure all the facts are straight because there are two sides to every story.

Rape is not something to be taken lightly, but there is always an opposite side to a rape accusation and if you don’t report it or at least make the attempt to, then you run into trouble down the line… like getting sued.

Jackie was the only point of reference for this story and anything Jackie said was taken as the events of that night. Elderly failed to realize that Jackie wasn’t the only one involved in the incidents of that night. It was just poor reporting on Elderly’s part.

Something else Elderly should have seen as a red flag was that “Jackie” didn’t give concrete details. He fact that her quotes were unconfirmed by the friend should tell you not to completely trust what “Jackie” said.

Overall it was just a poor job getting all sides of the story and making sure the facts were correct.

I read the Wright Thompson story The trouble with Johnny. I can’t remember who first introduced me to this story, but it perfectly foreshadowed the implosion that was Johnny Manziel.

One of the biggest writing techniques I took out of the story was Tool No. 27 — reveal traits of character. Throughout the story, you got glimpses into what Johnny Manziel was like off the football field and how those gave insight into what Manziel was really like. When he plays golf with his father, Manziel’s father has to let him win otherwise he gets mad and starts throwing his clubs. The only time we saw Manziel at first was on a football field. Before all the substance abuse and partying information finally surfaced the public looked at Johnny as a great college quarterback, not the destructive young adult he truly was.

Another tool I noticed was tool No. 29 — foreshadowing dramatic events and powerful conclusions. Throughout Thompson’s observations and his talk with Manziel’s father, the conclusion that Johnny was a troubled young man was evident. He struggled controlling his emotions and became irrational at times. You could see throughout the writing that Manziel had the makings of a teenager trapped in a millionaire quarterbacks body. It wasn’t until three years after the article was posted that we actually saw how damaged Manziel was.

The final tool that really caught my eye was tool No. 26 — Use dialogue as a form of action. The most prevalent use of dialogue were among the observations that Thompson captured, whether it be on the golf course or at the dinner table. All the interactions gave a key look at Manziel’s personality and gave a more accurate depiction of his character traits.

Ridiculous. I think that is the only way that I can describe the new open records laws in the state of Georgia.

This is a travesty for the public. Not only can you not give relevant information to the public and possibly shed light on wrongdoing in a timely manner, but now you face the risk of not being able to get information out when it’s still on the public’s minds. Ten days might have been okay, maybe even 20, but 90. That’s a 3,000 percent increase.

The institutions have entirely too much power now. Cover ups are easier and shady and deceptive acts are all too enticing. I am not saying institutions would do that, but the ability to do has increased. 90 days is a lot of time just for a response. And that is just for a response. They can take another 90 days just to actually give you the information. What part of this makes sense?

Oh, and it’s just supposedly to prevent institutions outside of Georgia from seeing who the Universities of Georgia are recruiting. Just go recruit the kid instead of worrying about other schools.

I think it is even more frightening to the degree that our politicians make back-alley deals with each other. This new open records rule was passed on the back of another bill. The amendment was quietly added to existing legislation designed to restrict public access to records about Georgia’s economic development projects.

First off, I don’t even know what that means, but I do know that this part of the bill was added after Kirby Smart visited the Georgia state capital. Sounds fishy right?

What would baseball be without its numerous over-analyzed statistics? Instead of making the game simpler, statisticians have found a way to make baseball more complex.

Statcast is a new revolutionary tracking tool that can tell the exit velocity of a baseball off a hitters bat. It collects the data using a series of high-resolution optical cameras along with radar equipment that has been installed in all 30 Major League ballparks.

But Statcast hasn’t made the lives of front office executives any easier. The FiveThirtyEight article I took a look at showed that the technology isn’t full proof. Apparently, not all of the hits are being tracked. After discussing with several MLB executives FiveThirtyEight discovered which types of hits weren’t being tracked.

They then displayed this through a graphic, which was well thought out. The graphic showed that Statcast has become more accurate in the last year, however is still missing several types of hits. Now missing is kind of a relative term in this situation. An MLB Exec wants as much information as possible to determine how profitable a player may be, so 5 percent of the hits not being tracked is a big deal.

That 5 percent represents the most missed type of hit; the popup. The graphic continues to show which types of hits yield the most missing data and how it has either improved or gotten worse over the past year. Only the popup has gotten worse. Groundballs, flyballs and line drives are all under 2 percent of its data missing.

The article then goes into to explaining why popups might be the most missed category. Statcast works best with intermediate angled hits. Popups have a high trajectory and are therefore hard for the radar to pick up. Also pop-ups come off the bat at a low velocity which is also difficult to pick up.

This article from Lacrosse Magazine was actually published in August. It chronicles the journey of a local high school player who wanted to come back after college and try to grow the sport in the Atlanta area.

Dusty DeStefano of MIH performance training tells the Snellville Patch how he has to come up with new training regiments — different from football or soccer — to get players ready for a lacrosse season.

GPB put out an article looking at the flip side of the lacrosse popularity discussion. Their article focuses more injury aspect of lacrosse. Basically, the article didn’t have many conclusions when it came to comparing lacrosse with other sports, however within the lacrosse realm, the number of injuries has increased.

Tony Schivone of WSB wrote of one man’s journey — Liam Banks — and his quest to expand lacrosse to Atlanta. His article expands on how youth lacrosse in Georgia has influenced lacrosse at a higher level. More colleges are coming to Georgia to play games. He even mentions the notion of a professional team coming to Atlanta, which happened.

The 2015 Brunswick News article tells how Phillip Driscoll started a lacrosse program in Brunswick. He has expanded it to include three high schools who are gaining more momentum towards becoming varsity programs.

Questions:

• What has changed about lacrosse in the past decade to make it an popular sport?
• Does it have to do with the sport itself or are young kids just feed up with other sports?
• Is there not enough research to determine yet if lacrosse if safer than football of hockey or is it just a preconceived notion from parents?
• What was the event that made lacrosse gain popularity in Georgia?
• Where is lacrosse popping up in Georgia outside the metro Atlanta area?
• How is the move to lacrosse affecting participation or outlook on other sports like football or baseball?

I remember the 2008 football season at Milton high school like it was yesterday. It was our first winning season in nine years and eight wins was the most since 1993.

I went to all 11 games and when reading the article by the Milton herald, it brought back good memories of watching Toney Williams run the ball to the tune of 27 touchdowns and over 2,000 rushing yards.

The article was a reflection of a 8-3 season and why it wasn’t an anomaly — because to many people including myself, it was a surprise. Milton hosted a playoff game for the first time in 25 years and ended a seven game losing streak to rival Roswell.

The 2008 Milton season was a compilation of years of youth football actually paying off. The same group of players were together from the time they were in fifth grade to the time they graduated high school.