15th Annual Bragging Rights Issue of Texas School Business Magazine

▲ Students in Flour Bluff ISD’s Sports Information and Marketing Program serve as commentators at district sporting events.

FLOUR BLUFF ISD Flour Bluff ISD

Students take the lead roles in sports information and marketing

County: Nueces

by Bobby Hawthorne

2020 enrollment: 5,751

K

oby Barrera left the Flour Bluff High School football program after his sophomore year because he realized his chances of playing were next to nil, but he still loved the sport, and so, one day, sitting in his junior English class, he heard an announcement over the PA system.

“Interested in being a commentator for the spring football game? If so, contact coach Bob Chapman.”

He was more than interested.

“I didn’t have any experience with commentating or doing any kind of broadcast,” Koby says. “But I’d just gotten out of football, and I was looking for something to do. I love football. I know football. I can talk about football.”

So, he contacted Chapman and served as a color commentator for the spring game. Afterward,

ESC region: 2 Superintendent: Velma Soliz-Garcia Number of schools: 7

Chapman pulled him aside and said, “You did a great job. That was your first time? I can’t believe it.”

It would not be his last.

Now a senior, Koby’s developed a reporting style that’s as breezy and coherent as anything you’ll find anywhere, and that’s not just on Friday nights.

It’s Saturday and Sunday afternoons, too. Like a growing number of Flour Bluff students, he said he’s found his calling via the district’s Sports Information and Marketing Program.

Launched in 2018, the program has bulked up from a single class of a dozen or so to two classes that are “bursting at the seams,” according to athletic director and head football coach Chris Steinbruck. The idea grew from the confluence of several independent realities. First, the district public information officer needed help, especially

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