Eating it up: varsity style

"Baltimore Polytechnic Institute senior defender Nick Halkias looks to help guide his team to another City Championship this soccer season and hopes to play at a Division I college next year following graduation."

The other day a couple of my buddies and I were talking about playing sports in high school, and as we chomped away at some fast food, I realized that we all could have been better athletes if we had only eaten properly.

What made me think of this was because my buddy was craving a soft pretzel with hot nacho cheese. What does this have to do with anything I am talking about? Soft pretzels and velvety nacho cheese was my prime lunch special in high school.

Although I ate some sort of sandwich, I never skipped a day of lunch with out a tub of hot cheese and a super large pretzel; or two.

What else amazed us is not only were we eating horribly on game day, but between lunch, which was served anywhere from 10:40 a.m. (no that's not a typo) to 12:10 p.m., we weren't refueling anytime between then and kick-off.

So here we are, probably not eating a healthy breakfast, if one at all, then consuming the worst possible foods for lunch, than using that stored energy to try and make the best performance of our lives on the soccer (or lacrosse) fields at night.

Just think how much better off we would have been if we had eaten a nutritious breakfast, a healthy lunch without soda and greasy foods and than refueled with proper carbohydrates and water before the match?

Yeah. Makes me wonder, too. Although, my buddy Ben used to chug 32 oz. sodas during halftime and that never seemed to slow him down. Odd.

Anyways, as per usual, I love shooting these varsity features. Not only do the players generally "eat it up" and love every minute of these shoots, I have a blast trying to make the look like super stars.

I was never the super star per say, I always felt I was more or less the unsung hero. Yet getting into the paper was always something special, so I always want to make these players feel that way, too.

For this shot, I had another concept in mind as I sat in the parking lot waiting for him to get dressed into his uniform.

The only problem was that my idea would have portrayed him as an offensive threat, which he was not. He was a hard-nosed defender. The kind that would get under my skin and take me out of my game, or so he confirmed.

So I kept it simple, like I should have done with my lunch in high school.