Six El Capitan HIgh School Advanced Media Broadcasting students recently had the opportunity to produce a sports highlight video that aired on CBS47 on Friday night. The students went out and captured footage of the Gauchos flag football game against Atwater on Thursday night and turned the package around so it could air  on the CBS47 newscast segment “Student Sidelines.”

 

“It was a really cool opportunity for the students,” said ECHS Animation and Media Pathway Head Lauren Duran. “We had to explain it a little bit to the students because it's a different thing. It's not just a class assignment. It's not just this thing that we only do at the school. It's something that's going to be seen over the region, and they were excited about it.”

 

The ECHA media broadcasting team consisted of Amelia Rojas-Yang, G’Von Edmonds, Jose Flores-Dominguez, Adrian Zavala, Rafael Figueroa and William Thomas. Together they worked to capture the video footage of the Gauchos’ 24-20 win over Atwater on Thursday night. They then had to choose the highlights that they would use, write a script for Flores-Dominquez who served as the reporter who introduced the highlight package on camera and did the voice-over narrating the highlight package and edit the video by their 5 p.m. deadline on Friday.

 

“I feel like it's an experience that I can learn from in the future,” Flores-Dominguez said. “I’m proud of me and my team because it was a team effort.”

 

KSEE24/CBS47 Sports Director Scott Bemis says the “Student Sidelines” segment is something new for the station's high school football coverage on Friday nights. Students from Buchanan and Central East high schools have put together similar reports this season.

 

“We had an idea for this new segment, which we called "Student Sidelines"    where a student, or students, would file a report about a game that involved their school, that would air in the Friday night show,” Bemis said. The 'Student Sidelines' is a report in the one minute to 1:15 range in total time, and usually features a student doing an on camera setup at their game, and the student voicing over highlights from the game all edited together into one report.”

 

Bemis says they’ve been picking Thursday night football games to give the students more time to turn the video package around for Friday’s broadcast. However, with all six MUHSD schools now having their own stadiums, there isn’t a need to move home games to Thursday due to scheduling conflicts. So Bemis reached out to El Capitan High athletic director Rodd Parker about having their media students put together a report on a Thursday flag football game.

 

Duran says it was fun watching her students in action at the flag football game. “I was so surprised,” she said. “They were running back and forth, really following the action. They were the ones that strategized where they wanted to stand (at the game). They were there before I was, which really shows their enthusiasm. I was very impressed with what they were able to capture. There were a lot of really close calls in the game, and it seemed like they really were thrilled to be there.”

 

Picking which video highlights to include in their report was a challenge. They were able to capture Molly Skinner’s long touchdown that proved to be the difference for the El Capitan flag football team in the victory. “It was a fun experience,” Flores-Dominguez said. “I do know the biggest challenge was the time we had to get it done.”

 

The students were able to watch their final product on the news. “I heard Jose talking and he realized, ‘Oh, it's on at a time that my mom can watch it.’ Duran said. “It's so hard for them to see the real world in here, even as much as I talk about it or we see examples. I think actually seeing it is going to be so cool for them.”

Shawn Jansen is the MUHSD Program Manager Digital Media. He can be reached at Sjansen@muhsd.org.