My Favorite Photos From The 2023-2024 West Lafayette Red Devil Season

Last year was a fun year making photos at West Side. For the first time I had a player on one of the teams. It is a whole new thing to be photographing kids that you grew up watching play the game. It is pretty cool to see them come into their own and realize their potential. After my super long West Side softball post I have tried to trim this post down a little. I will stop talking now and just start posting some photos.

This was part of one of the craziest games that I have ever seen so it will start this countdown off. At halftime I nearly left the stadium because West Side was getting beat badly. I decided to give them one drive in the second half to see what they could do. They ended up pulling off one of the biggest 4th quarter comebacks that I have seen to capture the sectional title. It was an amazing game to photograph, and this was one of my favorite photos from the postgame celebration.

This year I covered the softball team for West Side more than any other team. I made a post a few days ago with way too many photos in it. It was a fun year though so I had a lot of fun memories from it. You will see a lot more from the softball season as this countdown goes on.

This was part of a fun night at the football field. The light was amazing, and then it led to a great sunset. I liked the idea of just silhouetting the top of the scoreboard against that beautiful sky.

Late in season you don’t have the best light during pregame. My trick every year is to break out the speed light to have some fun with shutter drag. It is a good way to have some fun, but also get something different. This was one of my favorite shutter drag photos from the year.

I wonder how his photo turned out?

I covered a couple of West Side girls basketball games last year. I think that one was for the paper and the other was for the team on senior night. When you show up for a team that you don’t see very often you try and find players that might show some emotion. From my pregame scouting I had one picked out, and they did not disappoint.

This might be the heaviest rain that I have ever made photos in. For a ton of this game the rain came down so hard I wondered if anything would be in focus. Lucky for me my lens was not working so I was manually focusing anyway. That might have led to a higher keeper rate for me. This is one of my favorite photos from a  soggy night at the field.

This photo is on here for one reason. Dani was a fun player to photograph. At Frontier she got a chance to catch and nailed the one baserunner who dared to try and steal against her. It was a fun moment after the play.

I was only at the soccer field a couple of times during the season. One of those times though was for the sectional championship. This was a fun game to make photos at because it seemed like everyone had a part in it.

The sky was perfect on this day to make some pregame photos of the West Side softball team. When you start the game with the worm you know that it is going to be a good day.

When you are making photos at a West Side football game the sidelines are filled with photographers. Here the defense was on the field, but I knew that it was covered. I moved over to catch this moment as the quarterback was going over some plays with the coach. The light was perfect to make an interesting photo.

I really had too much fun making photos at Benton Central. I have always seen photos from games out there, but never made it out to make photos. The way that the schedule works means that I will only get one more chance in a couple of years to make photos there again.

I only was at one West Side girls soccer game last year. There is a certain part of the season where the light is amazing for a few minutes. I really had some fun selling out for that great light. This was one of my favorite photos from that time.

Part of seeing a team many times over the season is that you learn the routines so that you can be in the right place at the right time. Here I was able to use what I learned the game before to frame up this photo before the team got to me. With the sunset sky in the background it was a cool little moment.

This is one of those photos that was a long time coming. A freshman who has the tools just needed that big hit to get things going. This was her reaction after getting that big hit during the sectional championship game.

I have covered a bunch of games in this gym in the past. For the last few years though I have not been in there so much. The lighting is way better than when I used to make photos there over ten years ago so I need to find more reasons to get back into the gym. You get a clean look that you don’t get at a lot of high school gyms.

The windmills and the sky were something that I would have went out to photograph at Benton Central on their own. Here though they created a fantastic background for my photos.

This seems to be a common theme for this post, but I only made it to a couple of West Side baseball games this year.  They play their home games in my neighborhood, but things just didn’t work out this year. I need to find a way to make some room in the schedule to cover a couple more games this coming year. Of course one of the two times that I saw them play was across town. I had just covered the softball game and headed over to make some photos as the sun was going down. I love this field so it was great to get to see it again.

I don’t always put action photos into my year end posts. I think that they are harder to choose from so I usually stick to the moments around the action. This is one that I really like though because I was following the player coming right at me manually focusing my old Canon lens. These are the hardest photos to make so I was very pleased with this one worked out.

It is not always easy to make photos like this for softball. There is usually something in the way to prevent it on that part of the stands. Here in Twin Lakes though I had some room to move around to get just the angle that I needed.

This is a photo that I had thought about for a while. When I used to cover games here I didn’t have the lens to do this. I always had it in the back of my mind though. This year the team had me out to cover senior night, and I could finally make my photo. What better player to finally realize the idea than one of the best to ever do it at West Side?

Another photo of Adrienne Tolen playing another sport. Here she is getting the ball back into the infield during the sectional play at Twin Lakes. Adrienne was a star in three sports at West Side. That is not easy to do. It will be interesting to see what she does at the next level.

I had some fun at football games this past year finding new ways to photograph the pregame routine. Here the sky was so good that I wanted to make this photo. It is always fun to make the captain photo pregame. This might have been the best one that I made last year.

This year my oldest started her high school career. It was fun putting everything that I have learned over the years to use documenting her freshman year. These are three of my favorites from the year.