Hamber's First Student-Led Sports Network

Photo Credit (both): Hamber Athletics Media Crew

This year marks the debut of the student-run Griffins Sports Network. The Griffins Sports Network, often referred to as the GSN, features exclusive interviews, highlights, and weekly recaps with Hamber athletes, and is accessible through the Hamber Athletics (@hamberathletics) Instagram account. 

GSN creators Anand Munkh-Orgil (12), Ryan Chen (12), and Cobe Monte (12) aim to showcase Hamber athletes and connect the athletics community to the general student body. “We hope to reach the audience of everyone in the school because we want to give recognition to the hardworking student athletes,” said Chen. Munkh-Orgil said, “Our overall goal is to lift up Hamber spirit for athletics.”

Before the GSN’s launch, the creators had to pitch their idea to the school administration. “At first when we were trying to get our club going it got rejected, so it taught us how to persevere and that even if there are obstacles, to work around it,” said Munkh-Orgil.

Not only did the idea get shut down initially; they also faced other obstacles before they started filming. “We’ve faced complications such as how we need student consent for each interview but we bypassed this by handing out forms,” said Chen. Once they resolved these obstacles, the three creators could film and post content. 

Chen, who is in charge of editing the videos and checking if the content is good to go before uploading, said “I use an app called Capcut to produce content because it is really easy to access and use during school hours. It takes around 10-20 minutes.”

In regards to the content of each video, GSN follows a specific format. “We post [the videos] on Instagram reels and each video can only be one minute and thirty seconds long. We have two interviewers who ask at least two questions each,” Monte said. “We start off with the intro, then ask them a few questions ranging from their mentality going into a game, to how the season’s looking right now.”

The creators of the project have learned a variety of new skills through the Griffins Sports Network. For instance, Munkh-Orgil expressed that while working on the GSN, he learned about professional social skills. 

“We have to talk to different people from different teams and ask what schedule they can do and ask informative questions, which taught us a bunch of social skills,” he said. 

Monte had a different perspective of what this experience has taught him. “The whole crew of GSN are new to this but it’s a learning process. We’ve learned that having a good background and background knowledge of who were interviewing makes the video more interesting,” he said.

Although this is the first year that the Griffins Sports Network is running, it will also be the last for these seniors. “Our plan is to pass it on to people that are as passionate as us,” Chen said.

So far, the GSN has hosted interviews with the senior boys and girls volleyball team, senior boys soccer team, cross country team, the winners of the grade 8 and 9 volleyball intramurals, and the bantam boys’ basketball team.