ChargerVision was founded by student Malik Carter ‘13 during the 2011-2012 school year. Malik approached Mr. Steelman to be his sponsor a new extracurricular club...and the rest is history.
Malik, whose friends affectionately nicknamed him "Malik the Freak," secured a crew of interested talent and eager technicians to help him produce a serial live newscast called "The Morning Freakout."
Malik took the first steps of this new journey piecing together equipment, much of it his own, as our ChargerVision program explored new feature capabilities like green screening, cellular Internet (3G at the time), and graphics overlays.
Under Malik's leadership, ChargerVision applied for a Cox Communications grant and was generously awarded $2,500 to purchase camera upgrades, tripods, and more cutting edge technology to boost our program.
On March 27, 2012, we showcased the West Point Academy recognition ceremony celebrating Katie Wilson '13 in our first live broadcast of a community event. Malik not only kicked things off for ChargerVision, but set the stage for growth, and left a lasting legacy.
In the summer of 2013, ChargerVision was recruited by the GVTV Network who was on the hunt for OKC area programs to join their 12 Tulsa-area member schools. GVTV rebranded as the OKPreps.com network that still covers Oklahoma high school sports today.
Heritage Hall leadership committed expansion of our program in the form of a $5,000 initial investment in new equipment that would allow ChargerVision to emulate an ESPN-style broadcast. ChargerVision hit the pavement in search of additional sponsorship funding from alumni, local, and state businesses. Fuzzy's & Texadelphia Social Grill, owned by alumni Brian Bogert '05, signed on quickly as our Presenting Sponsor and continues to be our primary supporter.
The club that Carter had formed evolved into a course, and highly-motivated and dedicated roster of 9 crew members who embraced the new platform and immediately made their mark. Among those pioneers were senior leaders Price Brown (producer, 42 broadcasts), Keegan Sandusky (wide angle camera, 33 broadcasts), and Jamal James (director, 32 broadcasts). Rathen Carter, younger brother of founding father Malik, joined the crew to continue the 'family business.' The crew also featured senior Rayce Denton, who now works in the music and cinema industry, as well as lone freshman Kenneth Stebbins, who you'll read more about below. Five more Chargers would work at least one event in the Spring as the community began to take notice.
That school year, the ChargerVision crew traveled 758 miles to produce 68 events that were watched by over 10,000 unique viewers. Setting the bar high for future squads, the 2013-14 streamers were awarded the "Broadcast Crew of the Year" award by the OKPreps network, which had over 20 member schools at the time.
As the 2013-14 school year came to a close, Price Brown realized that in order to leave a legacy, he needed to train a younger, interested crew member to become our next producer. Producing is one of the more complex jobs a ChargerVision student can undertake, so it takes a perfect fit. And that's what we found in Kenneth Stebbins '17.
Over the next three seasons, Kenneth leveraged his passion for innovation and computer programming to not only become a legendary producer, but to elevate our entire program to new heights. Brown stayed involved as he began college up the turnpike at Rogers State in Tulsa, and this allowed Stebbins to learn the tricks of the trade while simultaneously exploring new features.
During Stebbins' sophomore year, ChargerVision migrated production apps from Boinx to Vmix. Vmix had the capability to record 4 inputs of instant replay, but learning the system held a steep learning curve. Under Kenneth's direction, ChargerVision successfully began to integrate slow motion replay into our broadcasts – and viewers LOVED it! Over the course of his sophomore and junior year, Stebbins also stepped out on his own to learn Java and build his own app for managing control of our graphics scoreboard input, which proved handy on road contests or home games without the ability for us to connect an automated ScoreBot device. Even as a college freshman at Neumont College of Computer Science, he continued to support innovations as our crew used his scoreboard app.
If Kenneth was "the Guru" of ChargerVision, one could argue Jake Steelman '19 was "The GOAT." As Kenneth's first understudy, Jake quickly became a "swiss army knife" of crew tasks. Not only did he work cameras, direct cameramen, and produce broadcasts, he elevated ChargerVision's graphic design, digital photography, and social media game. During his junior year, Jake stepped into Kenneth's role as our primary producer. As he prepared our next-in-line primary Producer, Jake transitioned to the sidelines and baselines to capture some phenomenal action shots of Charger athletes in action. During Jake's career, he also served as an innovator for our media side equipment – bringing in footage from drones, steady-cams, GoPros, and studio lighting. Steelman finished his career atop the all-time broadcast leaderboard with 167 live events worked to best his mentor, Stebbins, by 1. As an alumni, Jake continues to impact ChargerVision; he designed, built, and launched this website.
[Fox25 video story by Sam Gannon in September 2018]
In 2017-18, faculty members Steven Gillmore and Ryan Ackerman joined the crew as assistant facilitators. While Gillmore stayed on for multiple years (until Summer 2022) to make an impact on the program, Ackerman left the crew after one year to put more time into a support role with HH Performing Arts. Brown continued to volunteer with ChargerVision as he worked toward a degree in Film Technology at OCCC. Brown began as a paid assistant when Ackerman hung up the SDI cables, ending his ascent on the career broadcast leaderboard at 92 in total.
Stepping into the Producer role rather quickly was ChargerVision's "Mr. Reliable," Ryder Bates '20. Studying under two all-time greats in Stebbins and Steelman, it didn't take long for Ryder to decide that producing ChargerVision broadcasts was going to be his thing. The ever-present Producer began an assault on Steelman's career broadcast mark that was only halted (at 151) by the COVID-19 pandemic of his senior Spring. Bates graduated The Hall and traveled north to Oklahoma State University to major in Sports Media.
Ryder teamed up with fellow Class of 2020 graduate Alex Nguyen during their senior year to revive and elevate ChargerVision's instant replay game and improve broadcast stability. During their junior year, the "Dynamic Duo" of ChargerVision buried a five-year old broadcast computer (we actually played Taps on Insta for it) and custom-built a state-of-the-art computer on PCPartPicker, installing each component right down to the 18-core processor. At the conclusion of his career, Nguyen was also among the Top 10 career broadcasters. Alex and Ryder teamed up to broadcast virtual campaign events for David Hill during the quarantine of 2020.