Kelsey Tallman, Media Manager Extraordinaire

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 Learning, and Loving It 

by Sara Smith 

One could make the case that the football team now has a phenomenal Media Manager because Kelsey Tallman is such a good teammate. Was Kelsey ever a football player? No. But she is still an extraordinary teammate. 

Here is how this all started. For the past two years Kelsey has fell short of qualifying for the state track meet, but she continues to train with her fellow trackmates as they prepare for state. Her dedication prompted the track coach, Corey Randall, to suggest that Kelsey should go along with the team to the state track meet. However, the only way Kelsey could go with the team was as student media. He made the arrangements and Kelsey went along. While there, Kelsey took pictures and generally enjoyed herself while doing it. This past spring, Coach Randall decided to see if she will be willing to transfer her talent to the other team that he coaches…the football team. 

Kelsey admits that, at first, she didn’t know anything about editing video. She didn’t even know that her camera could take video. However, Kelsey was willing to step out, to take that intrepid step into discovery and in the process she found something that she loves. 

Like all artists, there has to be a starting point, a muse if you will. For some painters it starts with a color for some it starts with an image, for some musicians it starts with a melody while others start with a lyric. For Kelsey, it all starts with editing the video clips. She starts the process by whittling away at the video clips to get to the heart of each clip. Her second step is to find music that would be a good pairing, trying to match the mood of the game and the action in the clips. From there, she begins the tedious task of matching the video clips to the music. Kelsey admits that this is by far the most time-consuming part of the process, but she loves doing it. It can take Kelsey around two days to complete this part. It is apparent that this is a labor of love because the musical timing is flawless. It is so perfectly timed in the videos that the football players often appear to be executing choreography in time with the music. 

Does Kelsey have sophisticated equipment and software to manage all this video wizardy? No, actually, she uses a good camera to take the videos, but it was something that her family already had, and she uses an app on her phone to edit the video together. Makes a body wonder what she could do if she had high-tech equipment. 

Kelsey has also managed to work a local legend into her videos. She credits her mom (Laci Tallman) with the idea of adding audio from the late Donnie Middleton to all of her football videos. Donnie was a sports announcer for KMEM for many years, and Kelsey knows that “Donnie loved watching these boys as freshmen and sophomores” and that “he was really excited to see them as juniors and seniors.” So, Laci and Kelsey thought it would be good to pay tribute to him this season because “he was really excited about this team” and the season he saw coming this year. Since this does add another layer of difficulty to producing these videos, Laci does help out by listening to audio from previous games to help find audio clips that fit the video clips. 

Kelsey is a senior this year, and because of this experience, she is now looking at the possibility of going to college to do sports media. This opportunity just might turn into a career, and if it does Coach Randall can take at least some of the credit. Although, one might wonder who is actually in charge since Coach Randall calls Kelsey “The Boss”. 

As Kelsey looks forward to her future, she also looks back to all of the experiences that are helping to shape that future. For example, this past summer Kelsey did some traveling and found that she really enjoyed that as well. She traveled to Washington D.C. as a Tri-County essay contest winner, she traveled to Girls State at Lindenwood University in St. Charles, and she traveled to Colorado with NYR (Nationwide Youth Roundup). 

Could these two loves come together for a new and exciting adventure for Kelsey? Only time will tell.