Miller Sports Media is a new program at Noblesville High School that enhances the coverage of the Millers’ sports programs. Pictured are the students involved in Miller Sports Media: (back row) Grant Alexander, Jordan Kohlmeier, Jacob Tracy, and faculty advisor Samantha Deane; (front row) Kyla McDonald, Eryn McMahon, and Emma Hobbs. (Quinn Matthews)
By QUINN MATTHEWS
The rise of digital media is changing how high school sports are being covered.
It is also opening up opportunities for high school students to provide multi-faceted access to live streams, game statistics, capturing real-time photographs and video to be shared across various platforms. Between high school newspapers, news broadcast teams, and school yearbooks, sports are being reported on around the clock. Noblesville High School has raised the bar for sports coverage by implementing a new program: Miller Sports Media.
Two years ago, when the head of Athletic Information at Noblesville High School, Andrew Trisler, needed help with sports coverage, he asked Samantha Deane, a journalism teacher at Noblesville, how she could help highlight NHS sports.
“Andrew came to me and asked if we could start helping with athletic photos a bit more,” Deane said. “Then it kind of morphed into this idea of being in charge of social media in some capacity and taking all the pictures for sports.”
This program didn’t just bloom overnight. It took long hours of organization, preparation, and dedication to get them where they are now. Grant Alexander, a senior at Noblesville, was a part of the original team who helped build this program from the ground up.
“Landon Denison, Emma Pearce, Danica Carlson, [former NHS students] and I started by creating game day graphics. We did that for three weeks before we decided it’s too much for just us to do, so we brought on a whole team,” Alexander said.
Game day graphics are Instagram posts @MillerSportsMedia that highlight upcoming sporting events as well as statistics and results of Noblesville games and meets. Now that Miller Sports Media has an entire team to split up the work, they hope to continue to organize in an effort to cast a wide net of sports coverage across the district.
“Last Friday [Aug. 15] we did live commentary. We were making more hype videos and those types of things. This year, we added that we are the official athletic photographers, so we take all the official pictures and group pictures.” said Deane.
The team has grown not only in number, but in quality. They schedule picture days for sports teams called Media Days where the group’s photographers can capture pictures that players can keep forever. NHS senior Emma Hobbs, the head of Media Days, is continually looking for ways to feature and highlight Noblesville athletes.
“Once we got in the flow of doing media days and once I learned how to make things work and keep people moving, we got the hang of it. We got a fog machine and cool lights and everyone started to open up more and kids started having more fun,” said Hobbs.
As the Noblesville Athletics program continues to grow, with more than 30 competitive sports to cover, the Miller Sports Media team is faced with a large task. They understand that to keep up with the workload, they need more manpower, and therefore want to make it an official class.
“Right now we have two student interns that spend two blocks with Ms. Deane every other day, so that’s the first step to making it [Miller Sports Media] a class. We want to show the administration what we can do with just two people, in an effort to prove what impact we could make if we had all 30 of us in here for a class,” said Alexander.
Hamilton Southeastern High School has developed a similar program, but Deane has big aspirations for Miller Sports Media.
“A lot of schools in Hamilton County are starting to make this move but we’re hoping to be the best at it,” said Deane.
