On Saturday, May 2, The OneMa1ze Show was given the All-Kansas Video News award through the Kansas Scholastic Press Association group (KSPA) during this year’s state journalism contest.

Editor-in-Chief of the news program, Sydney Holmes, brought home the Videographer of the Year to the Maize Career Academy. She is the first ever winner of the award. Holmes is proud of her hard working staff and their determination to do their best. 

“We focused on getting better every episode and talked about how we can make our videos better all the time,” Holmes said. “When I saw that we got an All l-Kansas award it was like all our hard work actually paid off.” 

The show chose its “OneMa1ze” name because of the Maize High and Maize South High students united in a joint class during fourth block to create the news show. The mixed staff’s biggest challenge was covering an equal amount of content from both schools in a once a month, 15 minute show.

One of Maize South High’s student leaders, Megan Ta, knows what this award means for the future content of the program.

“Now that we know that we are capable of being the best, there’s no reason we should expect less,” Ta said. With the closing of the Maize school district, the schools converted to online school. However, Ta is excited to get back to the broadcasting room, “Personally it makes me hungry to get back to school and hopefully get more awards next year.”

Victor Nguyen, another Maize South student leader, was surprised at what broadcasting has become for him personally.

“It still feels pretty surreal. I took broadcast as an easy elective with no real expectations, I didn’t think we would ever win this many awards in such a short amount of time,” Nguyen said. “To be recognized as one of the best already in one year is amazing.”

Although the students report their own stories and news, Nguyen feels that “Mr. O’Daniel is definitely making a huge impact on the program.”

Spencer O’Daniel, advisor of The OneMa1ze Show, knows how important of a job his students have in creating visuals that give equal coverage to each student body, school and community.

“We started The OneMa1ze Show at the beginning of the 2019 school year as a new challenge to cover not only each high school, but our entire district and community,” O’Daniel said. “This award means so much because students from both high schools went all in on telling the best stories around the district, and doing it at a high level.”