The Collegio Pittsburg's student voice since 1916
A team of Pittsburg State students in the Media Production program placed first in the nation for their live sports broadcast of last year’s football game against Missouri Western.
The team included junior Tyler Godwin, who did the play by play, senior Caleb Wuthnow, who was the camera operator, now a first semester graduate student Shelby White, who was the replay operator, and a spring 2020 graduate Vanessa Tapia who directed the broadcast.
White was, and still is, elated to win the competition.
“My initial reaction when I was first told— it will seem kind of odd— was a bit lukewarm,” White said. “I was told when I was in the middle of doing some homework, so I was in homework mode. But a couple hours later when I had a chance to really reflect on, even now, almost a week and a half almost two weeks later, I’m just very ecstatic and very proud of what we’ve been able to do. I know that Dr. Comeau has been trying to get this award for several years. He’s had a lot of contenders for it… To finally beat (them)… was a huge accomplishment for him and I’m very proud and happy to be a part of that.”
Wuthnow was also extremely happy to win.
“It feels incredible to win a national award, I have been here for… (five) years helping out with broadcasts and… (an) award like this was always the goal,” Wuthnow said. “So, to achieve this is incredible.”
The PSU team beat out dozens of schools before moving on to the national level and competing against over 1,000 other entries.
“It’s kind of crazy because I’ve had a lot of the broadcasts, I’ve worked on for CAPS 13 Broadcasting for Pitt State Athletics be entered into Kansas Association of Broadcast Awards, that’s what we enter all of our productions in at the state level,” White said. “We’ve had a bunch of those win and then from there we typically go to a regional contest and then from there it just kind of depends on where it placed in that region (and) how confident Dr. Comeau feels about the production. So, even to have the production in his mind and the mind of those across the region be worthy of a national award contention is awe inspiring and then to actually win it is awesome because I think this is maybe the second award for a sports production that I’ve been a part of that’s even been considered for any sort of national award and then to actually have it win it is really great.”
After all the hard work that was put into the production, Wuthnow was happy to see it pay off.
“…I’m really proud of our crew, it takes a lot of long hours outside of classwork and social lives but to achieve something like this just fills us all with pride and definitely makes all the hard work worthwhile,” Wuthnow said.
White is also proud of the crew that worked on this production.
“…I’m very proud of the class that we had last year that put that production together and I am so thankful to be a part of this… production,” White said.