By Dwight Henson
PISD Communications
The 2018 McDonald’s Texas Invitational (MTXI) Basketball Tournament brought together volunteers, sponsors and student athletes from across Texas to raise money for the Pasadena ISD Education Foundation. Among them, a new group of unsung heroes: the audio video production students and teachers who worked tirelessly throughout the three days to ensure live coverage of the tournament, from start to finish.
“We’re videoing the games, interviewing coaches, taking pictures and posting on social media,” said Tegeler audio video production teacher Raymond Quoyeser. “Students learn about trouble-shooting, time management and collaboration. The best thing throughout is that we are all learning from each other.”
Working the basketball tournament provides students with valuable, real-world experience beyond what they learn in the classroom—doubly so this year following the district’s decision to stream the tournament in-house, to satisfy the marketing expectations of sponsors such as McDonald’s.
"Without the support of our sponsors, this tournament would not be possible," said MTXI marketing chairman Bruce Stone. "We were blown away by how much success we experienced as we made sure our sponsors got the recognition they deserved. With the help of our AV students, we were able to hit 486,000 impressions on Twitter, 86,000 page views for the tourney's website and reach 18,000 people on the tournament's Facebook page."
“Being able to study the analytics allows us to show that our students’ work is invaluable to our sponsors in reaching the widest possible audience,” added MTXI communications chairman Art Del Barrio.
“What we do here during the tournament is as real as it gets,” said SHHS audio video teacher Scott Cundiff. “We are working in a real life job situation with real life needs. People are watching our streams, both here on campus and back at the home campuses of the teams that participate.”
With the stakes so high, extra preparation was needed to ensure a smooth production took place from the first tip-off.
“We had several meetings and training sessions to prepare for the tournament,” said CTHS audio video production teacher Andrea Nguyen. “Students watched videos from previous events and studied reporting, shooting and editing techniques.”
“We spent three days ahead of time going through all of our equipment: setting up cameras, Tricaster, cables, soundboard, microphones, tripods, wireless transmitters and computers to make sure all was ready to go,” added Cundiff.
The preparation paid off, as PISD AV students successfully streamed the games to over 20,000 viewers and gained insight into an industry that is a dream job for many.
“Participating in the tournament inspires me to pursue this as my future career,” said CTHS senior Dardana Herrera.
“It gave me an overall idea of what the real world looks like within the audio and video production industry,” added CTHS senior Eduardo Verastegui. “It provided compelling opportunities for me to meet new people who could potentially find value and show interest in my work.”
“I've learned a variety of things about different equipment we used and about the people I worked with,” said CTHS senior Ashton Corpus. “I will be forever grateful for having the opportunity to gain more knowledge and exposure to real-world applications.”
The success of this past year’s tournament has led to an increase of interest from corporate sponsors. Businesses interested in supporting Pasadena ISD’s Education Foundation by sponsoring the tournament should visit texasinvitational.com or call 713-740-5388.