With all eight classes of high school football getting champions this past weekend, attention now turns full throttle to basketball. The Girls Intercity Tournament was held before Thanksgiving. The Boys Intercity Tournament is in progress. With that came the first showdown between Unit 5 rivals Normal Community High and Normal Community West High on Nov. 27.
NCHS won the first battle at Illinois Wesleyan University’s Shirk Center, beating the Wildcats, 57-50. There were plenty of enthusiastic fans, and I saw a media member or two working the game. But I also saw two young men with video cameras performing a service for each of the teams.
NCHS senior Tom O’Shea and Normal West sophomore Zachary Todd are student managers for their respective schools’ boys basketball teams. They each were at the top level of the Shirk Center with a video camera on a small tripod. They each had orders to tape game action, which of course, would later enable their teams’ respective coaches to get a bird’s-eye view of how their teams did against their opponent.
Eighteen-year-old O’Shea has had job of videographer (the fancier term for this job – feel free to put that on your resume, guys…) for NCHS boys’ basketball since his freshman year. He does this for job for NCHS’ cross-country and baseball teams, too. O’Shea is usually sitting on the team bench for most games, except when his father, James, can’t make games to do the videographer’s task. Then, Tom gets the video assignment.
“I’d like to continue to do sports somehow when I get to college,” Tom O’Shea said. He is thinking in terms of being team manager there, too. When he gets older, “maybe coaching” is something he said he would have an interest in.
This season is the first behind the camera for Normal West’s Todd, who, like O’Shea, is a team manager for the boys’ varsity team. At 16, Todd is doing this without any prior experience as a team manager.
Todd gave a typical job description for a team manager: “I’ve been filming the games. I go to all the practices, and help out with whatever the coaches need for me to do,” Todd said. Todd is one of two managers at West. The other manager is Austin Brinkman.
The instructions to the videographers for each team vary only slightly. “Just follow the ball” were the directions O’Shea said NCHS’ coaching staff, led by Ironmen head coach Dave Witzig, gave him. Todd got similar instructions, but West coaches asked him to film the action a half-court at a time.
“The coaches asked me to follow the ball and get as much of the opponents’ defense,” were the instructions he received from the Wildcats’ coaching staff, led by head coach Brian Cupples.
Going to college is on Todd’s post-high school agenda. “I don’t know if I will pursue basketball, but I am definitely going to go to college, and possibly go into church ministry work.”
Todd did try out to play for West’s freshman team but did not make it. “It’s good to be a part of the team, although I don’t actually get to play,” Todd said. “It’s still good to be a part of the team and help out whenever I can for because I’m really excited to be part of their basketball program.”
On another subject, congratulations to Thespian Troupe 1156 from University High School, for contributing to a good cause. Members of Troupe 1156 participated in this year’s “Trick Or Treat So Kids Can Eat,” also known as TOTS-EAT, sponsored by the International Thespian Society.
Troupe 1156 gathered about 250 pounds of food which was collected for local food charities in the community. U-High joined 319 troupes from 38 states involved in the campaign. U-High’s collection contributed to setting a record for the charity. A total of 348,065 pounds of food was collected from the troupes that participated. That total donated beat the total of 332,700 pounds of food that had been collected for the charity last year.