Their names were called, announcing their victory. From the group of 16 students emerge the leaders, who step onto the stage to receive their award. Cameras flash and parents beam at their children as they stand before them accepting their first place plaque. Their heads spin, overwhelmed with a sense of immense pride at their victory, and they know that the past 72 hours have been worth it. They spent the weekend putting their skills to the test, creating films while facing time constraints and fierce competition, only to be awarded for achieving such a high standard of excellence.

For the majority of students, advisory is the only place that they ever get the chance to see what the Wolfbyte crew is capable of. However, the crew has recently won film competitions around the state of Kansas for their hard work and dedication to the show. They competed at the Emporia Film Festival, the Kansas State Fair, and most recently, VidCon, where they won the sweepstakes competition with nine awards. One of the biggest contributors to the crew’s success has been their steadfast dedication to their visions, a set of “rules” they use as a guide when creating every show.

“This year [the crew is] hungry,” Broadcast teacher Steve Cortez said. “They’re hungry to do well because they really believe in the visions we put together that the show is not about us, it’s about the kids and the people of Blue Valley Southwest. One of the things we’re trying to do is evoke some feeling and have feeling in our stories so that it’s not just a story of just facts. We want to feel an emotion. That’s what we’re living by, that’s what we’re trying to do. So they are really buying into our vision, and they should because they came up with it.”

Part of the Wolfbyte vision has to do with how the crew comes together as a team and the relationships that they have built while working on the show.

“[Wolfbyte] gives me this aspect of a team because our first vision is #FOE, which is family over everything, and we really try to compliment each other, improve each other and work as a team,” executive producer Cassie Johnson said. “[The show] is very time consuming, so we really grow together, and the bonding I’ve gotten from broadcast is something that is just irreplaceable. I have the best friends because of this class, and people that I wouldn’t normally hang out with are in this class. It’s amazing to see all of the friendships grow.”

Playing up all of their individual strengths allows the crew to create the best possible show for the students at Blue Valley Southwest, which is another part of their vision.

“We want to make each story better than the last,” editing producer Jillian Lewis said. “Part of our vision is that we want to have an equal balance of fun packages and serious packages, so we really try to be funny but also be serious to evoke emotion. We kind of ask ourselves every week ‘Are we following our vision? Are we doing what we strive to do?’ I think what motivates us is just wanting to do better than the story before. We want to do better because we want to leave our mark on the school.”

Unfortunately, the whole school isn’t always attentive to the amount of work and dedication that goes into each show, making film competitions a better way for the Wolfbyte crew to see that they are on the right track.

“I know that not everything in this school is important to everyone,” Lewis said. “Some people don’t care about debate or they don’t care about this or that, so a lot of people kind of look over broadcast and they don’t think that it’s very hard.”

However, flashy awards and first place medals aren’t the only way that the crew measures their success.

“If we didn’t win a single award this year but we did our best to tell a great story, I’d be ok with that,” Cortez said. “I don’t look at awards as our end-all-be-all. What I look at is did we tell a great story? That’s what I want. Even if they don’t win a single award, if they work hard on a story and have true passion for it, then they’ve succeeded.”

It was with this mentality that Wolfbyte entered VidCon, a film competition held in Springfield, Missouri from Nov. 1 through Nov. 3.Their win at this competition boosted the crew’s pride in all of the work that they do by letting them know that their dedication to their vision had paid off.

“This makes me feel good that all of my hard work is paying off,” Lewis said. “We do stand out and other schools are kind of scared of us, like when we go [to competitions] they’re like ‘Oh, Southwest is here.’”

But perhaps the person with the most pride in the crew’s achievement was the man who made their win possible by teaching and motivating them every day.

“I’m very proud anytime my kids-because they are my children- work hard and to the best of their ability to do the things I taught them,” Cortez said. “Obviously I can only take them so far and they have to take things further on their own, but I was just extremely proud. I will say that once I do the teaching, during the competitions I will really let the students do their own work. In other words, I don’t sit there and hover over them and make sure they’re doing exactly what I taught them. I really believe it’s their chance to shine on their own. My previous crews built a foundation of excellence in our program, so I think when you have that foundation of excellence, you don’t want to be the crew that brings the level of excellence down. So I think their motivation is very intrinsic. They’ve seen what the other crews have done and they want to maintain that excellence at Wolfbyte TV and exceed that excellence if they can.”

As they work together every day, the crew pulls motivation from one another in order to achieve the excellence that they strive for.

“What motivates me is my crew because they show me things that make me a better broadcaster and a better person every single day,” Johnson said. “I want to improve myself and my work for them because, even though I’m a senior and I’ll be going off, what I do now will help the program later. I want to make a lasting impact on this program because I have been a part of it for so long and to show that excellence can be achieved.”