Egg Bowl live (hopefully) on Trojan Live

Fans who can’t get to the Egg Bowl in person can catch all the action via the Petaluma Trojan Live YouTube channel - hopefully.

Plans are for the school’s TV journalism’s new sports department to stream both the varsity and junior varsity games live on the school’s YouTube channel.

To be successful will take some ingenuity. According to Griffin Epstein, who heads the sports department, first efforts to broadcast from the Casa Grande field were unsuccessful because there isn’t a strong enough bandwidth at the Casa field.

Griffin has a plan to connect at the Casa gym and run cables to the football field, but will have to wait to see if it works.

If all goes well, both junior varsity and varsity games will be telecast live. If not, videos of the games will be shown shortly after their conclusion.

To access the video and all Trojan Live productions, visit the Petaluma High School home page at www.petalumacityschools.org/petalumahigh and click on the camera icon at the right of the page.

The Egg Bowl broadcast is part of the broadcast journalism class’s first real foray into sports. Epstein began the effort last season, videoing games and interviews. He was truly a one-man show.

This year, he has a complete sports department helping him with seven students all focused on sports, including three girls. The young sports reporters have plans to cover all Petaluma High sports with interviews, features and, whenever possible, live coverage.

Epstein, a junior, even has a “tech expert,” senior Matthew Kalemba, helping set up cameras and other needed equipment.

Epstein makes sure that everyone has an opportunity to work on the various aspects of the coverage, including in front of the camera conducting the interviews.

Epstein also writes for the student newspaper, the Trojan Tribune. “There is definitely a difference,” he says about video journalism, compared to print, “but I’m comfortable in either environment.”

He says he enjoys the writing, but if he has to choose, it would be video. “My goal is to be a play-by-play announcer,” he says.