Three Central Plains Elementary School students were busy during a Central Plains Middle School basketball games, running the camera and announcing the B and C teams
games for the Central Plains Livestream internet broadcast.
Lawson Oeser, EmilyRyan and Rebecca Stratmann are fifth grade students who volunteered to try their hands at the business end of a sports broadcast. Tyler Holmes, a fourth grader
at CPES has also done announcing duties during B and C games.
 Scott Mitchum, technology director for Central Plains has been in charge of the Livestream broadcasts for three years now. His son, Ben Mitchum is librarian at Central Plains Middle School and does the play-by-play for middle school and high school football games while Scott runs the camera. Then they switch jobs during basketball season.
One of the goals of the program is to get students involved as an excellent
hands-on learning experience.
Last year Bridgett Beran, a senior at Central Plains High School did the play-by-play for several games toward the end of the basketballseason and is now majoring in agricultural journalism at Kansas State University.
Having even younger students wasn’t a problem as far Mitchum was concerned, and he is thrilled that they were willing to take a chance and put themselves on the public stage. They took suggestions very well and by the end of the B and C games felt very comfortable running the computer and the camera as they switched jobs each game. They  learned how to project their voices to the microphone.
Mitchum expects to have a line of students ready to try their hand at the next home games and will set up a rotation system so everyone who is interested gets to participate. And who knows what an experience like this might mean for a students future plans?