Golden Eagles Broadcast Network named best in state

Frederick High School’s play-by-play team has big first year

BY JOHN RENFROW JRENFROW@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM

When it comes to broadcast sports coverage at the high school level, Frederick High School’s Golden Eagles Broadcast Network (GEBN) has established high standards.

Last week, GEBN took home the “First-Place in Play-by-Play Sports Program” award from the Colorado Student Media Association. e Golden Eagles’ coverage of the boys’ basketball matchup between Frederick and Harrison in the Sweet 16 of the CHSAA playo s in February claimed the gold.

Jake Marsing, GEBN advisor and social studies teacher at FHS, said the award is essentially winning the state championship in broadcasting. at’s especially impressive, considering this is the rst year the network has existed as it’s currently constructed.

“It’s really been a testament to our students who work hard every day. We have amazing student leaders,” Marsing said. “ e thing that’s really allowed us to take o has been the leadership and the work ethic of students, who put in an enormous amount of work every day to make us better.” ere’s been an exponential amount of improvement from the be- ginning of the year to where they are now. It wasn’t too long ago they were streaming on an iPad with little-to-no idea what they were doing. But a lot of the credit goes to underclassmen who stepped up, Marsing said.

Two of those underclassmen are Carly Evans and Zoe Wittler, the broadcasting team that won the award for the Golden Eagles. Evans is a freshman and Wittler is sophomore, but they’re both naturals on the mi- crophone.

While Evans handles the play-byplay, Wittler, a standout basketball player in her own right for the school, adds experienced color commentary.

“De nitely jumping into the color helps having played basketball before,” Wittler said. “You’re able to bring all of your knowledge and perspective of the game from a player’s standpoint to the color commentary… You’re able to say ‘this is how the players might feel in this

Wittler admits it can be di cult to call the games without wanting to lace up her own shoes, but she’ll often walk o the court directly after playing her own games to call the boys’ games on air.

“To be honest, I think it just kind of came up, you know what I mean?” Evans said. “It was kind of in the back of my head. I always knew that I wanted to do something that involved being on-air. But I didn’t think it would go this far. I’m really honored to be a part of this program and it’s just a really cool opportunity, especially to win this award.”

Evans always provides some color commentary during the football season, and she was nominated by FHS to be the Colorado Broadcaster e commitment to the program by the students who run it has resulted in success, Gould said. Before nding the winning recipe, they stuck through the harder months, and allowed themselves to make mistakes and learn from them, she added.

Students have the opportunity to serve di erent roles within the network, such as the associate producer, executive producer, play-by-play broadcaster, and more.

Khloe Gould, a sophomore, is the current executive producer who will move into the associate producer role next year.

But there’s still room for success,