“Let’s find a place to meet at halftime of this game. I have extra passes. Darren.”

Thank goodness.

After direct messaging Darren Cooper, of Varsity Aces, the Twitter account of the Bergen Record High School Sports Department, he told us to meet with him to obtain media passes when we arrived at Metlife Stadium for Saturday’s football state final.

The struggle was over. This was a satisfying and dry way to end the season.

The press box was filled with other reporters from multiple newspapers.

The Smoke Signal, embarked on a big endeavor this year, going completely paperless and uploading new content every single day to our online website. This included extensive coverage of Pascack Valley sports, with a big emphasis on football. Throughout the season we have combined our efforts to write two to three articles about football per week. That adds up to about 30 stories.

When we found out that PV would be going to MetLife for the state championship game, we assumed that it meant we would be granted field access no problem, just like was the case for all other games.

However, things did not go as smoothly as anticipated.

It started about two weeks before the game, when our adviser, Mr. Bill Rawson made a request for media credentials from the NJSIAA. These media passes would have given us access to the field, as well as the press box. He received an email back saying that they could not send passes to the school, but that MetLife issues some on-site passes that we could try to obtain.

“Good luck,” the email said at the end. Good luck, indeed.

Rawson was not confident about our chances and made another appeal to the NJSIAA after finding a “contact us” submission form on the organization’s website. He filled the form out, but there was no response at all.

We then went to the administration to see if they could help us out.

Our principal, Mr. Tom DeMaio really helped us out. He provided us field passes for the game (something we really thank him and Director of Athletics Mr. Tom Gattoni for).

The problem was that steady rain was in the forecast for game day, and we would have no opportunity to escape it. Other journalists can go up to the press box to keep themselves and, more importantly, their notebooks dry. Not us.

Of course, Saturday morning was upon us and the rain was coming down hard. We began thinking of ways we could draw attention to our predicament. Jake thought of taking our cause to a place where everyone is, Twitter. We decided to text friends, and tell them to tweet #getthesmokesignalintothepressbox. Within minutes, we had many Twitter notifications from students who were using the hashtag.

After many of these Tweets, the Smoke Signal Twitter handle (@pvsmokesignal follow it if you haven’t already) received a Tweet from Cooper, telling us to “DM (direct message) him.” After a quick exchange in messages, he said that he had extra passes and could get us into the box. We met him when we got to the stadium and the 1 p.m. game between River Dell and Sparta had ended.

Just like that we were quickly on a walk with one of the best high school sports writers in the area. We went up an elevator and we were outside the press box. We walked into a room with one security guard at the door. He asked if we were coaches, but we quickly responded saying, “We have passes,” and we were well on our way. We found three seats, pulled out our laptops, notebooks, phones, and camera and went to work on our biggest article of the season.

We were able to take stats, pictures, write stories, and keep those not at the game updated with live tweets, using the wifi in the press box. All of this would have been very difficult, if not impossible, if we had been on the field being rained on. The rain would have made our notebooks wet, we could have ruined the camera (purchased with The Smoke Signal budget this year), and laptops were out of the question.

When the game was over, the field passes given to us by the administration became very important. We were able to get onto the field with those passes after the game was over. We were able to take pictures and get interviews with multiple players and coaches. We were right in the mix with other reporters from big North Jersey newspapers and cameramen. We truly felt like real reporters during and after the game.

The real reporters that we are.

(The fearless, fearful sports guys would like to extend a huge thank you to Bergen Record columnist Darren Cooper, without whom the journey would not have been possible.)