A Dad's Cut: Harry's Sophomore Season at Guelph
Filming every game on a Sony a6700, watching my son catch two touchdowns in a near-impossible comeback against undefeated Laurier, and figuring out what it means to be useful as a football dad.
Harry's sophomore season with the Guelph Gryphons ended the way nobody saw coming, except maybe the kids in that locker room.
The team finished 3 and 5 in the regular season. Not the record anyone wanted. But football has this way of making the regular season a footnote the moment the playoffs start. The Gryphons traveled to Western for the OUA quarter final, and somehow the game came down to a walk-off rouge. A single point on a punt to win it. That's how they punched their ticket to the semifinal against an undefeated Laurier.
Then Laurier happened. By halftime, Guelph was down 30. Thirty points. The kind of deficit that usually ends a season quietly, with handshakes and a long bus ride home.
Instead, the Gryphons rallied back to within 7.
In that game, Harry caught two touchdowns. One of them was a pretty spectacular contested deep ball that I'm still rewatching. He went up, the defender went up, Harry came down with it. The kind of catch that makes a dad forget where the zoom button is on his camera.
He led the team in receiving touchdowns this year. Four on the season. Thirty-one catches for 489 yards. The numbers don't tell you what it felt like, but they tell you he was there, doing the work, every Saturday.
Filming Number 80
What I learned last year was that the "TV" coverage of OUA games is fine, but it isn't yours. It's zoomed in on whoever has the ball. If Harry was running a route across the field on the opposite hash, he was off-camera. Which meant he couldn't review his game. Couldn't see his cuts, his routes, his blocks, his timing.
So this year I brought the Sony a6700 to every game, stock lens, and filmed only Harry. 4K, 120 frames per second. Every snap. If he was on the field, the camera was on him.
After each game I'd dump the footage into a shared album in the Photos app and send him the link. Now he had his game. Not the highlight reel version. The whole thing. Every rep where the ball didn't come his way, every block he made, every route that wasn't quite right. That's the stuff you learn from.
It's also the only way I knew how to be useful. I can't run a route. I can't catch a fade in traffic. But I can hold a camera steady for three hours in November weather and make sure my kid has tape to study.
The Dad's Cut
Speaking of highlights, enjoy a "dad's cut" of Harry Varty's sophomore season. Forgive me for the slo-mo. It's my video, and I thought it was fun.
Props to photographer Kyle Rodriguez for some of the stills attached to this post. The shots from the Laurier semifinal especially.
Next year is year three. The grind continues. So does the filming.
Stay in the loop
I don't write on a schedule. I write when I have something worth saying. Subscribe so you don't miss it when I do.