The first scheduled game was December 5th.

The team we were supposed to play, Cooper, delayed the start of their season. I had work in Atlanta on the 5th and couldn’t make the game if we went ahead and scheduled one. On the night before the 5th, Elder scheduled a home game against Sycamore. To date that is the only home basketball game that I didn’t stream during my four years at Elder.

December 22nd, 2020 marked the first sporting event broadcast from our new studio set up. We had spent weeks getting together and making sure that everything was running smoothly. School was on Christmas Break on the 22nd I recall arriving to Elder around 8 in the morning to get the equipment set up and running before our first basketball game. It was a triple header against Roger Bacon.

That night all three games went off without any major hiccups, everything went smoothly. We didn’t try to push ourselves that first night because we didn’t want to overwhelm the system or drown in everything we were trying to do. We set the bar low for the rest of the season, we were hoping to try and do new things each game and push ourselves to the limit. Check out some of the action from the game here!

Prior to the Turpin game, we were having a lot of issues with getting camera and audio signals to come back to the studio. About an hour prior to tip off we pulled the plug on the studio and got our old equipment out and running for the stream that night. The game against Roger Bacon went too smoothly, something was bound to happen the next game and it sure did.

I mentioned earlier that we wanted to push ourselves each and every game. Slowly we were able to knock out some bucket list items. The first on that list was something we did last season, which is placing mics on the backboards to pick up the sweet sound of the SWISH. The mics made their season debut the same night that Elder Basketball defeated Moeller for the first time since 2016.

That night was also the first night that we debuted the Dual View or Duwel View if you prefer. This Dual View was brought up on screen during a timeout.

Lots of fun tonight:

This was a fun project! pic.twitter.com/FXL7YB2M9f

— Adam Duwel🇺🇸🎥 (@AdamDuwel) January 16, 2021

The view brought up the St. Xavier vs LaSalle stream thanks to our friends over at St. Xavier’s ESPX. This kept those watching the Elder- Moeller game up to speed with the other GCL South game going on. This view became really important during the last game of the regular season when Elder needed a win and a Moeller loss to share a spot of the GCL South title with St. Xavier and Moeller. That night, Elder beat LaSalle in overtime, I pulled up the Moeller- St. Xavier stream and had our commentators talked about that game and the importance of a St. Xavier win. I thought it was a nice touch for the fans of the GCL South to be able to be in the know of the other game going on in the conference.

One of the best things to happen during this season was the consistency of our on air talent. In years past we have struggled finding people to be on the call for the Frosh and JV games. This season we had a high value of interest. For the frosh games we had Carter and DJ on the call, both freshman themselves.   The JV games were called by self proclaimed professionals Will and Greg both juniors. Finally the Varsity games were called by three seniors Will, Jacob and Kyle. All three levels of commentators were wonderful and exciting to work with. The varsity guys really crushed it. Each and every game they would have notes and stats prepared and it really showed when they were talking. The great thing about them is that they enjoyed doing it and had fun with it. Will as some of you may know is an all around pro with the Elder Sports Network.

During the soccer season Will would take the helm of the on air duties and assemble a start studded lineup to help him. Will even did some camera work for a game! I enjoyed having fun with the commentators over the season but enjoyed seeing the growth of all of them as the season progressed.