If you look up during a football or soccer game, you can sometimes see Athletic Director Mitch Gore or Instructional Coach David Thompson peering out the window of a fourth-floor classroom to try and get a better look. You may see some students as well, holding a camera and talking, seemingly to no one. What you won’t see, though, is the countless hours spent over the past two years putting on Wilson’s streaming service, WilsonLive.

The student-run organization livestreams and posts videos of Wilson’s athletic and academic events, allowing them to be viewed across the world.

WilsonLive uses the services of BoxCast to record and stream events. Students recording a game use a camera to film video and audio, which is then sent to a box approximately the size of a phone which sits next to the camera. The box then sends the data to the cloud which allows it to be projected simultaneously on WilsonLive’s BoxCast YouTube pages. These videos have received over 4,000 views.

Of its many functions, WilsonLive is primarily a service to families who cannot always attend their child’s events. WilsonLive was designed “as a service to parents, as a service to grandparents and uncles and aunts and relatives or somebody who cares about a kid. That’s really what’s driving this,” said Thompson, who founded and leads the group.

Although it focuses mostly on sports, WilsonLive extends its influence to the entire Wilson community. Thompson noted that they also broadcast graduation, the pep rally, guest speakers, and more. WilsonLive has also been used to record teachers in the classroom as a form of observation.

The biggest issue WilsonLive faces is funding. BoxCast costs $3,000 per year and receives little funding from the school. Thompson hopes to get Wilson sports teams to sponsor the program on a month-to-month basis, paying around $300 per month to support the program and get a team logo overlay on broadcasts. If 10 teams sponsored the program for a month each, it would cover nearly all expenses.

The organization is also looking for more student volunteers to run video for winter games. Any student is welcome to join, and new students will be on crews with more experienced broadcasters in what is almost entirely on-the-job training. To join, simply contact Thompson by email or in his office, room 207, or email him at david.thompson@dc.gov. WilsonLive offers substantial community service hours to all students involved. •