By virtue of having the coolest equipment (and my wife volunteering me) I am now the official videographer of my son's travel basketball team.  I have filmed games before but only for fun and my family. This will be for the coaches to review and the team to watch; much more pressure, so I thought I would ask my friends at LIHD for their suggestions. I would appreciate any help/ideas from HD camcorder fans or fathers/mothers/coaches with game film experience. Here are some issues I have already thought about:

Do you watch the game or film the game: Way too easy to get caught up in the game and forget you are filming. Usually happens at the worst time.

Tripod vs handheld: Basketball is a pretty fast game. Is it easier to keep up with the flow of the game and avoid obstuctions with the camera handheld? Would a tripod allow you to watch more of the game while you are filming. Where do you find space for a tripod in the stands?

Zoom in vs out: When you are filming your child you tend to zoom in so you can catch the moments you are hoping for. This makes it more difficult to follow the ball and makes the film more choppy. On the other hand when you zoom out from the stands it is sometimes difficult to recognize the players and you can lose a little of the focus of the game.

HD vs SD: All right I know this seems an obvious answer at this site but it is really a storage issue. I think I remember seeing that an 8GB SD card holds about 3 1/2 hours of video in Standard Definition. I don't know how much HD video it holds but I often seem to run out during filming.  How much HD video should the card store and how predictable is that recording time? We sometimes have 3 games in a day or 6 in a weekend tournament - that's a lot of storage. Is SD quality adequate for game review?

Best way to transfer: I am assuming that the best way to get the video ready for the coaches to see would be to make a DVD. Are there other good options. Would it be a lot quicker to make those transfers or would I have more options if I filmed in standard def.

Commentary on or off: I assume a running commentary on gameplay and coach's decisions is not a good idea. This might be difficult. Is there an off switch for the microphone?

Anyway, I plan to have some fun with this and expect some trial and error. I would truly appreciate any suggestions or comments and hope to update this post if I learn anything new or useful. I expect the 2 biggest issues to be storage and battery life. I have a Panasonic HDC-SD9. The first tournament is on March 12. Wish me luck.....and I guess we should wish the team luck also.