High School Game Day

AHS Sports Network streams quality broadcasts to local fans

As team chaplain for the Ardmore High School football team, Heath Haney was never far from the sideline during the 2020 season. But the same couldn’t be said for many fans when the COVID-19 pandemic kept them away from the stands on Friday nights. Then one team parent had an idea to bring the community a little closer to the action.

“We had a lot of people not coming out to the ballgames and we were looking for a way we could get the games to people who weren’t able to come out,” Heath says. “And then Greg Wise had the idea to stream it by himself.”

Greg used his phone to stream the first game of the season on Facebook. The following week, Heath joined him along with another parent, Kevin Hillis, who provided more tech support. They started streaming from cameras the football team used to record game film, added commentary from a radio broadcast team and the AHS Sports Network was born.

The network has grown with each season, adding better-quality equipment, more cameras, coach interviews and coverage for more sports, all streaming live on Facebook and YouTube.

“Now we have kind of a traveling show when we go on the road,” math teacher and offensive line coach Jacob Sparkman says. “Everywhere we go people are talking about it, which is awesome. We’re doing something cutting edge, and we’re trying to be different and want it to be better.”

A team effort

As the quality of the production has grown, so has the team needed to keep it running. With Heath directing graphics and an assistant troubleshooting, a typical game can require as many as eight volunteers between commentators, operators of up to three cameras and a person to switch between each of those feeds on the broadcast.

When Jacob joined the team last year, it was with the hope of getting more students involved. He taught a media class to give students the skills needed to work the cameras. While a teacher shortage forced the school to put the class on hold this year, the experience was enough to inspire students like senior Sarah Townsend to find other outlets for the skills she picked up.

“I’m not the most tech smart person, but I learned how to use cameras. And that paid off because now I’ve bought a camera that I use on my own that I really enjoy,” she says. “I applied to be on yearbook, and now I shoot sporting events that don’t

get streamed.”

Community engagement with the network has also grown—games now average more than 250 viewers. With more eyes and expectations, Heath hopes to continue improving the experience for viewers by adding interactive segments like trivia and prize giveaways for the local crowd.

While much of the money for the network originally came from COVID stimulus grants and the athletic department, it’s increasingly able to rely on paid advertising to fund equipment upgrades. That support from the community helped the AHS Sports Network team create something special, even with technical limitations.

“We want to do more with it, but you’ve got to start somewhere. At the beginning, we had to pretty much build everything every week,” Jacob says. “We’re amateurs, not professionals. Nobody’s getting paid for any of this and people have not complained one bit. My favorite part has just been seeing people enjoy it.”

Clear signals

While the AHS Sports Network does its best to maintain a high-quality broadcast of every game throughout the year, that can be a challenge for road games. Often, the main barrier is having a reliable internet connection away from home.

“When we go on the road, we run a mobile hot spot and it’s always a 50-50 shot whether it’s going to work or not,” says Heath. “When we’re at home, our whole team breathes a sigh of relief because of the internet that we have. And we’re super thankful for them.”

In the network’s early days, Jacob remembers high-speed fiber from Ardmore Telephone Company being the defining technology that made the broadcasts possible. “I don’t think it would ever have gotten off the ground. We were frustrated at every home and away game because we would have so many issues,” he says. “Once we saw how well it could work with reliable internet, wheels started turning. We thought, ‘Oh, this can be real.’”

That connection has not only powered a better sports broadcast but helped the community connect with its teams and created more opportunities for students on and off the field. For Heath, one of the standout moments was the first time the network got a clip on the local ABC affiliate in Huntsville.

“We had a fullback that ran a play down the sideline and one of our students got the whole shot,” he says. “It was pretty exciting. His whole family and friends got to see him on there. That’s been the coolest thing is just the exposure that’s helping the kids and the players.”

Published with permission from ATC.