Now in its third 'season,' I think it is safe to say that our 16in16 Football Preview series is part of the terminology surrounding prep football in Hawaii.

The thought process behind 16in16 was simple. Talk with players and coaches from as many teams as we could handle prior to the start of the season, and create small video segments in the days leading up to the start of the season as a way to try and draw our user base back to the site prior to the start of the season. And last year's nearly 70,000 views of the various videos in the series seem to indicate that our concept is at least mildly successful.

Admittedly, it didn't start off very pretty. Each shoot was armed with a single video camera on a tripod with a shotgun microphone subbing in for a hand-held one. Between having to strategically cut sound bites from players and coaches between gusts of wind or having to keep in a snippet that featured a car starting behind Reggie Torres answer to a question, it was very much a homegrown product. No pretty intro graphics. We didn't even pipe in any background music. Thank God we had the voiceover stylings of my man Felipe Ojastro to make it at least sound professional.

Fast forward to today, and I'd say we've come a long way baby indeed. Led by Evan Asato, our production value is way more than I ever would have envisioned. Between reflectors and shade contraptions to sliders, gliders and more, I think the student athletes are a little blown away by the amount of equipment alone. And what used to be a one or maybe two man crew in our inaugural year, is now as many as five or six on occasion.

We've branched out as well, from an all-Oahu 16in16 two years ago, to covering at least one team from every league in the state in this year's edition. Will we branch out beyond 16 teams? Probably not. Based on the amount of time we have available, it pretty safe to say that we're at a nice number teams-wise.

Doing 16in16 makes covering high school sports nearly a year round venture. We start sometime around May selecting a tentative field, get some preliminary looks at teams, finalize our 16, then coordinate filming days with coaches. Once we begin the actual shooting, there's scripts to be written, and assembly in-between, from editing and selecting video and audio clips, to creating logos and other graphics.

Its a lot of work, and I tip my hat to our 16in16 team, Evan, Felipe, Scott Nishi, Kalani Takase and Tyler Guieb, who along with our other staff put in hours of field time to make THIS happen.