<p>Thomas Crow was a fan on a mission.</p><p>As soon as the Franklin junior had found out that only about 250 people were going to be allowed to attend home football games this fall, his brain started working overtime to come up with a way in.</p><p>Crow found out through Twitter that the school’s broadcasting club, FCTV, was going to be in charge of airing a pay-per-view that would enable fans without ticket access to watch the Grizzly Cubs on Friday nights.</p><p>That, he figured, was his way in.</p>[sc:text-divider text-divider-title="Story continues below gallery" ]Click here to purchase photos from this gallery<p>"My thought process was, I’m only a junior," Crow said. "The chance that I’m special enough to make it into that many football games, at least home games, was pretty slim. So my next thought was, ‘Okay, what’s my best chance to be able to go to every game, or at least almost every game?’"</p><p>Crow approached FCTV director Kevin Hankins and Franklin athletic director Bill Doty about getting involved with the broadcast, and he found himself wearing a headset last Friday night when the Grizzly Cubs played their home opener against Shelbyville.</p><p>He and Franklin Community High School guidance counselor Brian Powers will be partnering on the play-by-play for all of the team’s home games.</p><p>With in-person attendance strictly limited this fall because of the COVID-19 pandemic, local high schools have turned to live broadcasts as a way to not only give more fans a chance to watch, but also to make up for some of the revenue loss created by those attendance constraints.</p><p>Center Grove, Franklin, Greenwood and Whiteland are all airing live pay-per-view streams of their home football games in partnership with the IHSAA Champions Network. The Trojans’ broadcast is being handled by the CG Sports Network; the other three are all being partially or fully run by students.</p><p>Some other schools around the state are providing free broadcasts through YouTube or other online platforms, but the four county schools chose to link up with the IHSAA because they felt its BlueFrame technology offers more flexibility and reliability.</p><p>"The IHSAA made it so much more cost-effective and easier for the schools with the partnership that they have with the BlueFrame technology," Hankins said. "So that cut down the need for some of the equipment and some of the back end-type stuff with the hosting."</p><p>Still, with a greater importance being placed on the broadcasts this year, some schools did feel a need to upgrade their equipment.</p><p>When Parker Irwin, now a senior at Greenwood, started the Woodmen Broadcasting Network during his freshman year, the group was using iPads to shoot various sporting events. This fall, there are at least four cameras being utilized during football broadcasts.</p><p>Irwin said that the broadcasting club was "not prepared whatsoever" to put together a larger-scale production — but Greenwood administrators stepped up to foot the bill for the upgraded equipment.</p><p>"The administration has been very good about getting us what we need to make this happen," Irwin said. "I think they see that it’s an important part of students’ lives, being able to get to athletic events even if you can’t physically be there. They’ve made that a really important part of this school year."</p><p>Greenwood’s broadcast is entirely student-run, with freshmen making up the bulk of the crew. When Irwin graduates, he plans to pass control of the club to two of them — Dalton Hockersmith and Stuart Luhigo.</p><p>Another freshman, Emma Baker, got involved with broadcasting in middle school and decided to stick with it. Baker runs one of the cameras on game nights; during the week, she’s in charge of color research for the broadcast — basically, finding interesting material for the on-air personnel to talk about during the game.</p><p>"We’re looking at things that happened on the day of the game," Baker said. "Anything from the last week or any prior games, last season even, and what’s happened between the two teams."</p><p>Putting together a professional-looking broadcast is paramount this fall, considering how many fans are forced to watch from a distance. Center Grove, for example, had 628 pay-per-view buys for its season opener against Decatur Central and 731 for the Warren Central game last Friday. With the Trojans ranked among the top 20 teams in the country, those numbers should remain sky-high.</p><p>Though the other county schools aren’t drawing quite that many viewers, there are still far more than there had been in years past. For that reason, Franklin and Whiteland still have teachers overseeing production.</p><p>Hankins is serving as the technical director during Franklin broadcasts, with a student assisting. Lucas Corley, who is in his first year as the radio and TV teacher at Whiteland, will fill a similar role beginning next week, when the Warriors have their first home game.</p><p>Students are operating the cameras at both schools, but Corley opted to have adults call the games at Whiteland — at least for this first season.</p><p>"My goal for our program is to make it where it’s student-led," Corley said.</p><p>Students have made it work at Greenwood despite the added pressure that a larger viewership has brought.</p><p>"It is definitely a little bit more pressure, because people are paying to watch these streams and we don’t want to mess it up," Baker said. "But so far, everything’s worked out pretty well — and it does add a little bit of excitement, because it’s not like where we’re just live-streaming on YouTube and maybe 20 or 50 people would show up."</p><p>Irwin believes that his crew has done a great job of rising to the occasion. After a test run during an early-season volleyball match that he called "maybe the worst broadcast I ever had," the group got some kinks worked out and was ready for prime time when football season kicked off against Bloomington North on Aug. 21.</p><p>"When we hit (that first) Friday, it was one of the best broadcasts we’ve had in four years," Irwin said. "The camera quality was great, the transitions were great, the camera work was great, the overlays were great — it was such a different feeling than what we’ve had in the past, broadcast-wise."</p><p>The excitement that the higher-quality broadcasts have brought — the chance for students to serve as the eyes and ears for hundreds of football fans in Johnson County and beyond — has some of those involved in the process considering it as a potential career path.</p><p>Crow has started to research the possibility of studying broadcast journalism in college and following in the footsteps of longtime pros like Al Michaels. But even if he doesn’t end up going that route in the long run, he’s proud to be a part of what he considers a historic production this fall.</p><p>"I think the broadcast is going to create an opportunity for a lot of people to just watch the game in a way they never really have before," Crow said. "We just want to try and carry over into people’s living rooms an aspect or feeling of being at the game as much as we possibly can."</p>[sc:pullout-title pullout-title="Where to watch" ][sc:pullout-text-begin]<p>Local football fans unable to get tickets can still watch many of their favorite teams play via pay-per-view. Streams of each team’s home games can be purchased at the following web pages:</p><p><strong>Center Grove:</strong> <a href="https://www.ihsaatv.org/CGSportsNetwork/">https://www.ihsaatv.org/CGSportsNetwork/</a></p><p><strong>Franklin: </strong><a href="https://www.ihsaatv.org/MidState/FranklinCommunity/">https://www.ihsaatv.org/MidState/FranklinCommunity/</a></p><p><strong>Greenwood:</strong> <a href="https://www.ihsaatv.org/MidState/GreenwoodCommunity/">https://www.ihsaatv.org/MidState/GreenwoodCommunity/</a></p><p><strong>Whiteland: </strong><a href="https://www.ihsaatv.org/MidState/WhitelandCommunity/">https://www.ihsaatv.org/MidState/WhitelandCommunity/</a></p>[sc:pullout-text-end]
