In the lobby, amongst the new furniture, a TV screen hangs on the wall directly across from the spirit store. The screen is the new sports video board, which is an interactive screen allowing people to view photos from Libertyville sports dating all the way back to the late 1920s, and see the accomplishments of each team.
At first glance, the home screen features shuffling photos in the background of sports with three main options: “Teams,” “All-state,” and “Newsom award.” “Teams” takes you to a display of all of the sports teams in Libertyville’s history; “All-state” takes you to all of the All-state athletes; and “Newsom Award” brings you to all of the winners of the prestigious award.
Libertyville’s athletic director Mr. Briant Kelly explained that, “the Newsom is [awarded to one] male and female senior athlete of each graduating class.” Mr. Kelly went on to state that they typically honor two winners, sometimes three each year, and the award is basically a symbol of their achievements over their four years at LHS.
But what was the motivation behind creating the board?
“I was trying to have a central location to have a lot of that information and also pictures. Pictures tell a story. Pictures are something that people like to look at, they don’t just want to read stuff”, Mr. Kelly stated.
He stated that the process would not have been possible without the help of many different people. Two of the biggest supporters were Parent Cats, who made a large donation to the project, and LHS legend Mr. Dale Eggert, who has been involved in Libertyville sports since he was a student and was the winner of the 1974 Newsom award. Mr. Eggert is also entering his 37th year in the LHS wrestling program, and his 28th year as the head coach. Mr. Kelly said that Mr. Eggert was one of his main resources for information on the sports board. He joked that he had a “resident historian” in Mr. Eggert, who “did a lot of leg work for me on past champions.”
As anyone who views the touchscreen can imagine, putting it all together was a monstrous task.
“There was a company that was out there that had done this at a couple schools, so I’d seen the feature [before]. We were trying to work with another company on doing this, so it was a longer process of getting it done” Mr. Kelly stated. From there, a lot of the process was just scanning things, such as photos and records.
“There used to be some more pictures on the wall, but I redid the front lobby by the main gym. A lot of those pictures were scanned in, [and] all the All-State pictures were scanned in. I also gave them about 90 yearbooks, and they took 90 yearbooks, all the history going back to the nineteen-teens, and scanned a lot of that information in that we gave them,” Mr. Kelly explained.
When asked about possible updates for the system, Mr. Kelly stated that the database can be updated from his computer, and he will mostly just do it after each season. He explained that all he has to do is upload a digital photo for the accomplishment, list what the accomplishments are, and it will immediately be sent out to the system.
If you haven’t already checked out the video board, I would highly suggest checking it out and playing around with it for a little while in the front lobby, or it can be found online at the Libertyville Athletics homepage.
