He shoots, he scores

WELLESLEY -- It's a chilly, windy late March afternoon and Babson College is taking on visiting Eastern Connecticut State University in a Division 3 men's lacrosse game. A photographer with a 300mm lens, baseball cap on backward, moves briskly up and down the sideline, his camera's motorized shutter firing repeatedly.

By the time the game ends, he will leave the field with 250 to 300 images, pictures of every player on the field. The next morning, those images will be online and available for purchase.

Jan Volk says what he's doing is preserving moments in the careers of young athletes that would otherwise be forgotten.

Six years ago, Volk, a former general manager of the Boston Celtics, and a group of investors started SportsPix LLC, which specializes in digital action photographs of youth, high school, and college sports events.

Volk said it wasn't his interaction with news photographers shooting Celtics championship runs -- he played an integral role in five NBA titles during his 26 years with the team -- that inspired him to go into the business.

His impetus was his own experience shooting pictures of his son, Matt, documenting everything from his days playing Wayland/Weston Pop Warner football to his collegiate track career at Bowdoin.

Volk said he enjoyed capturing those moments -- and he found there was plenty of interest from other parents in the photos he was taking.

He and his business partners saw an opportunity, a chance to provide "a real service to parents" who want a record of their children's sports careers, he said.

"If you don't take advantage of it, and if you don't document it... it's too late. You can't do anything about it after the fact," said Volk, whose 26-year-old son now coordinates Major League Baseball coverage on ESPN.

Two relatively recent developments, the advent of digital photography and the rise of the Internet, were a boon for Volk and others in this new business.

"As the technology changed, it became easier to take action photos and make them available to other people without processing them individually," Volk, 60, said in a recent interview at his nondescript office on Moody Street in Waltham.

SportsPix has just two full-time shooters, Volk and fellow owner Mike Tureski, but by employing a number of freelance photographers, the company can cover numerous area high school and college games six to seven days a week.

The company also lists the annual Bay State Games as a client and is the official photographer for the Cape Cod Baseball League, where it makes a photographic record of every player each summer.

The goal is magazine-quality photos, in volume. "We want to come out of every game with 250 to 300 postable images," said Volk. "We're looking to show the story of each of the players."

When the Wayland High football team capped its 13-0 season in December with the program's first Super Bowl win, a SportsPix shooter was firing away on the sidelines. A number of those images, as well as a cover shot by Volk of hard-hitting Wayland linebacker Joe Cerrone from the Thanksgiving Day game against archrival Weston, are displayed in this month's Bigger, Stronger & Faster magazine, a national high school and college weightlifting publication.

"Really nothing compares to Jan's work," said Wayland High football coach Scott Parseghian.

Personally, the coach is fond of a large picture by Volk that hangs in athletic director Martha Jamieson's office that shows him leading the Warriors onto the field in his first season.

Volk says that with the increased interest in athletics at all levels, there's no shortage of work, noting that on one busy day, he sent out 30 photographers.

At the college level, large quantities of quality action photos are invaluable, particularly since it's standard now for teams to have websites. Photos are also essential for use in media guides, recruitment brochures, and prints laminated for gifts to departing seniors.

"Jan has a nice little niche," said Paul Sweeney, director of sports information at Tufts University. "There is always a need for good sports photography. As a small college publicist, budget is a huge factor when hiring a vendor. The quality is very good, and his flexibility is very refreshing. And with the Web now, having photos up there is vital."

Babson's sports information director, Chris Buck, adds, "For us, Jan's critical; he provides me with a CD of every one of our players from all of the teams."

SportsPix has contracts to shoot a number of area college and high school sports programs. The athletic departments receive picture CDs and unlimited publication rights on the material. Individual shots can also be purchased on the company's website, sportspix.biz, where they typically are posted by the next day at the latest, Volk says. According to the website, the cost ranges from $16 for a single 5 by 7 to $140 for a 10-photo package.

The extent of the company's work is astounding. SportsPix has an inventory of 450,000 images.

"We shoot linemen. Nobody shoots linemen, but we do," Volk said proudly. "We're not so much telling the story of the game, but the story of the athlete."

Volk, a Wayland resident, played soccer and ran track at Newton High, then played soccer at Colby College.

As a teen, he met Red Auerbach while working as a camp counselor at the longtime Celtics leader's Camp Milbrook in Marshfield.

After graduating from Columbia Law School, Volk landed a job with the Celtics in 1971. He started out selling season-ticket packages, and recalls being tested by Auerbach every day. "He was always preparing you for your next job," said Volk.

In his days working his way up as a Celtics executive, he said he made a lot of decisions on publicity stills and had to think about "what constitutes a good photo." He took some photographs at practices, and struck up friendships with team photographer Steve Lipofsky as well as staff photographers with the daily newspapers in the city.

His 13-year tenure as GM ended in 1997, with Rick Pitino's arrival in town.

These days, Volk also works as a consultant to Weston resident Steve Belkin, who is an owner of the NBA's Atlanta Hawks and the NHL's Atlanta Thrashers, and has taught a sports business course at Tufts.

But with a camera in hand, he's in his zone. "I enjoy watching kids compete," said Volk.

With the Celtics, he witnessed 2,000-plus games but "was in the middle of everything," Volk said.

"Now I'm on the sidelines, literally, and I find it very satisfying."