WUSA, Channel 9’s Brett Haber presented Bishop Ireton junior Matt Krause and two other high school sports correspondents with awards and scholarships for their work in the station’s inaugural Campus Correspondent program with HighSchoolSports. com Monday at headquarters of the CBS affiliate in Washington.
In addition to the silver trophy presentation, a scholarship worth $3,000 was presented to the Alexandria native, son of Mr. & Mrs. Lincoln Krause. Also recognized was Mitchell Brown of Stonewall Jackson High School and overall winner Annabel Russell of Westlake High School. Krause had the program’s video clip of the year, noted Haber, who played Krause’s video of the Bullis 60-yard touchdown run that was nullified by a whistle when the Bulldogs executed such a great fake that not only did the Cardinals bite on it, but also the officials who blew the play dead while the quarterback was streaking untouched down the sideline. The sports anchor commented the video was elevated to the news desk from sports at their station and soon became a national YouTube hit.
Tammy Dorge, spokesperson for the DarCars, who with Toyota, sponsored this year’s campus correspondent program presented each winner with a pen, to “write down” their thoughts, their dreams, their goals. Haber, in his remarks to the students, encouraged them to pursue their passion in journalism and, borrowing from Ms Dorge’s theme, advised them at that using their new pens to “write a note to potential employers, interviewers, or people you meet, because that note makes a powerful impression that can separate you from others with just those few moments of your time.”
WUSA’s campus correspondence program attracted more than 50 reporters in its first year and its success surprised even the most ambitious supporters of the initiative at WUSA. “We recorded more than 200,000 hits a month on our HighSchoolSports.com website and our “game of the week” polls attracts more 20,000 votes some weeks according to Haber.
Accompanying Krause and his mother was Bishop Ireton principal, Tim Hamer, AD Bill Simmons, varsity cheerleaders Whitney Cook, Lizzy Spooner, and Margaret Gray, as well as the Cardinal mascot, MJ Foster.