Comment by PaulHoule

I've been through this with sports, the hierarchy is

(1) good portraits

(2) photos that show players in opposition to each other

(3) photos that tell a story

Developing the habit to do (1) consistently is important because photos like that are still usable. If you just chase the action in most sports the ball is between you and a player and you get a lot of shots of people's behinds so looking for the places where people are open is foundational.

(3) is tough because a play involves a number of events that don't usually appear in one frame except for a few shots in a game like:

https://mastodon.social/@UP8/114849463914827733