Combat Basketball

Every time there is an event that someone could get hurt, Marines ask for a Corpsman to provide medical coverage. In the civilian side of life, you worry about medical bills, how long it would take an ambulance to get there or just plain getting hurt. Overall most civilians I know are fairly careful about getting injured. Not so in my line of work.

I think with Marines, having their “doc” there adds a mental safety blanket. They don’t seem to worry about girly things like bruises, twisted ankles or hitting like football linebackers but without pads. Since my ball game is sadly lacking, I usually get out of it by taking pictures.

Last Sunday, two of my shops challenged each other and an afternoon of it with a bar-b-q grill and hotdogs and hamburgers. I took a lot of pictures, in fact I took over 400 pictures with the new camera (Canon S3), a full gig on a 4 gig card. It was a perfect day to take the new camera though its paces, seeing what it could do and it held its own, taking some amazing shots. Even with the digital Rebel, it was hit and miss with sports shots, people getting out of focus because they’re moving towards or away from you. Catching the action just right, usually I had to delete 1 out of every three picture, not that it was a big deal but it was still productive time lost.

Sunday was different, 4 pictures out of 400 were actual bad shots. Two were of a guy who jumped 6 inches away from the camera with his mouth open and the other 2 were lighting issues.

Marines don’t play things halfheartedly, it was full bore in your face street ball, rank got left at the sidelines, the girls that played were just as rough as the guys, when someone got tired, another body jumped in. No quarter given, none asked.

Corpsman doing standbys for such events mostly just sit around and watch and if they’re good at the sport, take part in it. Usually I tend to watch though a lens of a camera and on Sunday, my last picture of the day was a snapshot of an ankle turning in a direction its definitely not suppose to turn. My camera went back in its bag and we made a trip with some ice on the ankle to the ER down the street.

Know how rare it is to catch the mechanism of injury on a photo? I’ll be posting some of the photos later, tonight I’m way too tired. Plus my upload speed is super slow.

The ankle guy was able to walk out of the hospital that night, nothing was broken but he’ll be sore for a while. He’ll also have a picture for the rest of his life to go with the story. In a couple of weeks, he’ll be as good as new. The next day, most of the people playing stopped me in the hallways or at my office for some vitamin M (Motrin) and being the thoughtful corpsman that am, had little baggies ready in my pocket.