You can call it insanity at its finest or just wild, wacky entertainment, but whatever genre it goes by, TV99’s The Score has drawn Hanover County sports fans and kept them entertained for seven years running.

  The success of The Score can be attributed to the innovative thinking of its founders, Stacie Sizemore and Trip Wells.  Over the course of their tenure with TV99, station manager Sizemore and The Score producer/anchor Wells have carefully crafted a one-of-a-kind sports show that is not only unique to the state of Virginia but possibly the entire country.

  Unlike school television stations such as the one in Henrico County, TV99 uses Mass Communications students from the four Hanover County high schools to produce a quality weekly sports show. “Henrico has a station but they don’t have students helping them make the show,” Wells said. “They have like 10 producers or so.”

  A fact that Sizemore said leaves the Henrico group stumped when they look at their Hanover County competition. “They kind of wondered how we’re able to get a weekly sports show on the air with one producer to do it,” Sizemore said. “They’re like, ‘How are you guys doing that using students?’

  “We have a state of the art facility,” Sizemore said. “We have students actually hands-on making broadcast quality shows. We’re not going to have them make it and have it look half way. We’re going to get them to do as much as they’re capable of.”

  Wells agreed. “We try to shy away from the whole, Public Access stigma,” he said. “For the sports show, we want to look like an ESPN type show. We don’t want it to look all choppy.”

  Under the guiding hands of Sizemore and Wells, the students, write, direct, act, film and edit the material to be broadcast. “It’s an investment in the students,” Sizemore said. “It’s a Hanover County philosophy.”

  Working for The Score is an intern duty available to juniors and seniors who have completed Mass Comm I. The top students are then recommended by their teachers and from those numbers Sizemore and Wells trim the number to between 30 and 40 before making final cuts at 15 for the annual TV99 intern staff.

  When Sizemore started at TV99 a decade ago there was little call for a dedication to sports programming. “We’d been doing a sport show that was completely student produced and it was more of a monthly thing,” she said. “That’s all we could get done.”

  However, that changed in 2003 with the hiring of Wells. “When we hired Trip we realized we had someone who could actually film sports,” Sizemore said.

  But Wells admits The Score in its original format was somewhat bland. “It was straight sports for the first month or two,” Wells said. “It was, ‘Hello, here’s a game,’ and ‘Hello, here’s another game’…Then we put puppets on one week.”

  The use of hand puppets was admittedly inventive but both Sizemore and Wells knew it was a risk.

  “We put the show on the air and we literally sat here and looked at the phone and thought when is it going to start ringing,” Sizemore said.

  When no calls came the pair thought that the maneuver was either a success, or no one was watching the show.

  But when Wells went out to film athletic events the following week he found differently. He was mobbed by students. “Oh you had the puppets on! You had the puppets on!” they told him. “When are they coming back?”

  It was all the feedback the show needed to continue with the new off-the-wall format. From puppets the list of props and characters gradually grew. In a show that could now be best described as ESPN Sportscenter directed by Mel Brooks, it is not unusual to see Wells zap co-anchors off the show via his laser eyes, a talking Christmas tree, a Chia Pet, or a chicken on the set. “Anytime you can bring animals on that’s always a good time,” Wells said.

  And while it is all wild, crazy fun, there is a method to The Score’s madness.

  The sketches between sports reporting are not only entertainment but a means to allow students who have goals of working in sitcoms or feature films a showcase for their talents. “The students seem to have really caught onto the formula,” Sizemore said. “They like a sports show that has random Saturday Night Live sketches right in the middle of it. It seems to click for them.”

  The wide array of ideas comes from a board in Sizemore’s office where the students are allowed to write anything down. However, they have found that no matter how brilliant the idea, incorporating it into the plot line of the show can sometimes prove the real challenge.

  For instance, an idea will be incorporated in an upcoming episode that has been two years in the build up. “It is like, okay, this is a good idea but we’ve got to work our way to this point to make it work,” Sizemore said.

  Furthermore, the student anchors seen on television are simply characters played out week to week based upon their audition tapes. “We’re trying to teach them character development as well as plot development,” Sizemore said. “We have to teach them that if all the characters just got along, then it’s boring. So some of the characters don’t like other characters.”

  One such character is Ian S. Meyers the First, played by Lee-Davis senior Ian Meyers.

  “Last year I was the mailman and I was kind of who everybody picked on all the time, put down and made to cry all the time,” he said. “This year I’m a little bit bitter about it and me and Trip are kind of always bickering.”

  Despite what the viewer sees on TV the crew couldn’t be happier with one another. “Everybody is like best friends up here,” Meyers said.

  But beyond all else, The Score fills a distinct niche in the world of athletics by showcasing local high school sports in a means formerly not available. While Richmond television stations cover the big games, The Score’s concentration on county contests brings more footage and interviews regardless of ranking. In doing so they sometimes capture once in a lifetime events, such as Lee-Davis junior Jordan Boze recently winning back to back basketball games on last second 3-pointers.

In recent years the internet has allowed The Score to reach even more viewers, with every episode now available online. The program has even joined the social networking circle. “Over 300 fans on Facebook, so that’s big,” Wells said. “Even though Conan O’Brien has about 975,000, our 300 are Hanover County fans.”