CA News brings school spirit to the community

BY KADIE TAYLOR
FOR THE LAFAYETTE SUN

LAFAYETTE — Four Chambers Academy se- niors are bringing school spirit to their community through news, big and small, about students, young and old.

Editor Kent Nelson said there was a senior class a couple of years ago that originally created the idea of CA News, and he and the other current members were inspired to bring the idea back to life.

“Originally, it was me and Philip, and we were watching a little basketball game where a bunch of students were playing, and we got on the microphone, and we were just being funny and announcing the game,” he said. “And then we eventually were like, ‘It’d be cool if we started a podcast.’ Well, over time, it just kind of transitioned, and it started getting bigger and it reminded me of the CA News — the old one — and I showed it to him, and he thought it was pretty doggone cool. And I was like, ‘Well, we’re seniors now. Why don’t we just make our own CA News?’ We posted our first episode on Sept. 12, 2025, and it blew up — everybody loved it. Our big thing is, we want to be able to show off the little parts of the Chambers Academy that not every- body gets to see. So we eventually got it going and it started doing well, we got into a routine and it’s been good ever since.”

Gabriel Bridges, who covers sports and interviews guests, said he likes to spotlight athletes who do not typically get as much attention as football or basketball players.

“One of the reasons I wanted to [be a part of CA News] is it spotlights a whole lot more people,” he said. “Our football team does great, but half the time, some people don’t know who the best volleyball player is on the team. So I feel like it does really well on spotlighting other sports. A lot of people say Chambers doesn’t take other sports seriously, which isn’t true; people just don’t know about it, so I feel like that’s something that CA News does really well. We talk about the seniors that got accepted to other schools, and it spotlights a whole lot more people.”

Female Athletics and Activities Correspondent Halle Hurst said she enjoys highlighting team players at Chambers games.

“All those football players, they’ll have a player of the game, or whatever it is, and we can spotlight different sports so other players can have that mo-ment too,” she said. “We get to highlight volleyball, cheer, dance and basketball. We haven’t really gotten into baseball and softball yet, but we will. Our coverage has really helped everybody.”

Host and self-proclaimed CA News Mastermind, Philip Belcher, said he enjoys knowing that CA News appeals to students and parents of students in any grade.

“I think it’s good because if a parent has a kindergartener, or if they’ve just had a student graduate, they can watch the news two or three times a week and know what’s happening with the sports and academics,” he said. “We want to cover the Early Learning Center, we’re going to go through there and give people an update on that. We also want to do some games, we commentate — which kind of took off in volleyball — and we’ve done a little basketball.”

Through collaborating to create the CA News episodes, Nelson said the four members have learned teamwork and compro- mise, along with other important skills that will help the seniors as they pursue future education and careers.

“It’s a lot of compromise,” he said. “Because we all come up with great ideas, but we can’t cram all these ideas into one episode. Most of our seg- ments, especially the fun ones, are a combination of what Gabe said and what Halle said. They’re all good ideas, but we come together to compromise. Sometimes we’ll get on each other’s nerves, but at the end of the day, we’re able to combat that and put it all together. Also, when we started out, there was not very much organi- zation, because we’ve never done anything like this, so we were pretty much going in headfirst — which was not really a good idea, but it ended up being pretty good. About halfway through season one, I made a list of all of our segments and all of our sponsors — all the sponsorship money goes right into our equipment, but once we got that list going, it was great — we got it organized.”

Along with organization, Bridges said the four CA News members grew in confidence as they made more and more episodes.

“I feel like the biggest issue at first was, even though we weren’t orga- nized, we were definitely not confident,” he said. “If you look at the first few videos compared to what we do now, it took so much more time, because we were having to do so many takes. Maybe some of it was camera shy, but the second they get a camera on them, they couldn’t talk well, and we would have have to redo it multiple times. Now, I feel like we can do just about everything in one take. And if [more takes are needed], it’s just because, ‘Oh, I forgot the sponsor’ or something, it’s not because they messed up. So I feel like the growth of confidence was a big deal.”

Along with highlighting sports, Hurst said CA News engages families with younger students through highlighting them as well, and includes a segment called Kicking it with the Kinders.

“Since we are seniors, we have kinder buddies, and CA News does focus on the kindergarten class because we’re probably the closest to them, because we see them alot, and we want them to feel like we’re best friends with them,” she said. “We are very family-oriented, everybody is going to know everybody, because Chambers Academy is small... Most everybody gets along. So, having teachers not necessarily care that much if we grab somebody does help a lot. And after we post an episode, a bunch of teachers put it on their TV to watch it with their class.”

With the four CA News members having put time, energy and passion into CA News throughout their senior year, Belcher expressed a sentiment

the other members fully agreed with — the hope that CA News continues to grow through the next senior class.

“This year we’ve built CA News up a good bit — a good community, a good group, a decent-sized following and we’re hoping it will continue to grow,” he said. “I think next year those kids that we select will have even more pressure, because it’s like how are you going to compare to the original CA News and the community is going to be expecting a certain level of video. But I think the kids we select will do good.”

To watch CA News or learn more, visit The CA News on Facebook or www.youtube.com/@ therebelnews-m4g on YouTube.