Little Falls Kids Bringing Young Take To Broadcasting Sports

LITTLE FALLS (WJON News) -- The high school football season is winding down but the career of two play-by-play callers is just starting. 8th grader Brady Meyer and 7th grader Graham Bergman call games for Little Falls High School football and have been getting great reviews.

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Flyer Media Productions Producer Mark Diehl says he had both Meyer and Bergman send in audition videos of themselves calling a sports video game they were playing to get started and they offer fans a different view of the games:

"People really just enjoy listening to the kids and listening to the different level of excitement that they can bring and sometimes the kids they just want to call the game and so they tend to be kind of, I want to say, unbiased, I mean obviously they're Flyer fans but the excitement of the game, of the play comes through."

The duo has received rave reviews even from opponents like the Fergus Falls High School Athletic Director. Diehl says their program gets students started at the elementary and middle school levels:

"There are a number of schools that will do it at the high school level and they're able to dedicate full-time staff people to help assist with all of that, being the size of our district we're just not able to offer that and so having these kids as young as we do, yeah, that's pretty unique."

Diehl says the students who are part of Flyer Media Productions all do a great job, and besides experience, they get an added bonus:

"For every event that they record we keep a database file for all of them, even as 5th graders, 6th, 7th, and 8th graders, all the way through their high school career, and for every 13 events that they do we're able to offer them the equivalent of a quarter credit for high school."

He says he has one 7th-grade student who already has earned 2 full credits toward high school graduation.

Diehl says over the years they have had students who have gone on to work at ESPN, Shop NBC, and other major broadcasters so they want to keep feeding students opportunities to grow their skills. In addition to doing sports, the elementary school has a daily morning program that 5th-grade students put together.

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