Watching indoor sporting events can be difficult due to limitations of Covid-19. Schools across Henrico County discovered a solution that involves live streaming sports on YouTube.
In order to be able to stream on YouTube, each school’s YouTube channel has to have at least 1,000 subscribers. Godwin is currently sitting at over 1,800 subscribers. It was not easy to get over 1,000 subscribers, but thanks to the Godwin staff they were able to exceed expectations.
“We used an aggressive social media campaign with the help of Henrico County Public Schools Television Services. Additionally, we used messages on Schoology and through the weekly Eagle Express Newsletter that is sent to all families at Godwin,” said Godwin Director of Student Activities Tom Nadeau.
Nadeau is in charge of running the live stream. He will be working with a group of student volunteers who will be operating the cameras every home game.
Each day prior to the games, Nadeau and the student volunteers will advertise the link for spectators to tune in. The broadcast will simply be the video along with sound from within either the stadium or the gym. They are not going to have play-by-play announcers.
Due to Executive Order 72 from the Governor’s office, the number of tickets distributed is one per player for an indoor game and two per player for an outdoor game.
Live streaming games will help everyone stay safe, while still giving everyone a chance to see the games.
“We wanted to provide an opportunity for parents, family members, and students to see the games, but due to limited capacity we had to be creative with how we were able to do that this year,” said Nadeau.
All of Henrico County Public Schools will be live streaming sporting events. The home team at each game will be in charge of live streaming the game on their channel for both schools.
Most games, both Varsity and Junior Varsity, will be streamed live on the channel.
“At this time the plan is to live stream Field Hockey, Football, and Boys & Girls Volleyball. Cross Country and Golf will be difficult to stream given how spread out the courses are. Varsity and JV sports will be streamed, however, if there is a Varsity contest at the same time as a JV contest, the Varsity game will be shown live and our hope is to record the JV game and make it available through the channel later that evening,” said Nadeau.
