Tuesday night was one of those nights in sports journalism that make things — interesting.

The Austin boys soccer team was making just their second appearance in team history at the Minnesota Class A Boys State Soccer Tournament, facing off in the quarterfinals against Bemidji.

On the other side of that was the Austin football team, hosting Rochester John Marshall in the first round of the Section 1AAAAA Tournament at Art Hass Stadium.

For the record both teams won as Packers soccer moves on to the state semifinals and football will face Owatonna tonight in the section semifinals. So all in all it was a good night for Austin athletics.

Now here’s the flip-side: Why were these playoff scenarios on the same night? Football being arguably one of the biggest state high school events, especially the first night, and — it’s state soccer. STATE!

I’m just putting that out there because I have opinions — lots of them — and none of which will be featured in this column. Instead we will talk about my return to the sidelines as a reporter/photographer. Not, that I haven’t done this before, just not for a whole game where I’ve had to keep track of the event as it went. That goes back a long time to Huron, South Dakota, when I did that consistently as a sports writer.

Yep, I started my career as an intrepid sports reporter, prowling the sidelines in pursuit of that game story, that game rundown.

I worked my sources, got to the bottom of breakdowns on upcoming events and was able to expertly chew the end of my pen, thoughtfully dwelling on  each piece of information. I looked the part.

That was then, however, and Tuesday’s Austin, Rochester John Marshall game was now. For so many years now I’ve been able to turn all my attention to capturing the moment rather than having to write down details of said moment for transcription later. My notes, had you seen them, wouldn’t have been that different from obscure cave paintings. In fact my game analysis might have been better had I used cave paintings.

I found myself asking those around me often who ran what for how long, who got that tackle, am I chewing my pen thoughtfully enough?

Part of the problem though came down to two things: Lack of writing material and colder weather.

My first mistake was coming to the game fairly unprepared because I was not thinking of a game story, only of shots and laying the sports section out later in the evening.

So when I got to famed Art Hass Stadium, it quickly became apparent that I did not have enough notebook left. I would have to condense my already illegible scribble into something meaningful on both sides of the paper.

My hieroglyphic form of writing is better used for the tales of ancient Egypt than following the game because a jumbled mess of Tate Hebrink breaking off a 33-yard run was made complete with a cartwheel after the fact.

Wait did I actually write that? Hold on a second.

Okay, nope I didn’t but if you’ve seen my writing then you know that’s entirely possible. I’ve misread my notes often and am continually impressed with myself for not writing some milestone or another has been accomplished while walking an octopus.

Secondly, the increasingly dropping temps, forcing me to write things down with gloves. Writing anything with gloves is not easy, especially in a thin notebook and a camera dangling at my hip all the while trying to take pictures that show kids doing something other than recreating a motion-blurred scene.

At least they look fast I suppose.

Nevertheless, this made my already suspect writing look guilty of wordslaughter in the third degree.  “And’s “ looked like  “Unes, “ and  “yards “ somehow came out looking like  “pterodactyl. “

Of course, this was all just the prelude of writing the story that had me asking myself at times if I really was covering a football game. A sentence in my notebook had Jacob Halsey recording two eggplants on the night.

That’s a little extreme, but it did require me to put the few clues together to figure out that he had two sacks.

I guess the moral of this little tale is that when somebody says you can’t go back again — they are absolutely right.

Being a sports reporter again may not be in the cards any longer. I can fill in here and there, but all those skills I once had have atrophied to the point where I’m happy to just be still clicking a camera for the night.

Besides we can’t have people tackling eggplants. That just doesn’t make sense.