By Josh Sutker ‘23

Everyone in the Brother Rice community knows about the man behind the camera. At every sporting event last year, he was either taking pictures, broadcasting in his bright orange jacket, or playing defense for the lacrosse team. Jacob “Wiz” Wizgird ‘22 began to churn out content at the beginning of the football season last year, and it only got better with time.

Wizgird’s passion for videography and photography began in the BRTV club. He was able to cover the game from a different angle and started to realize how cool sports were, especially on 99th and Pulaski.

Wizgird had the pleasure of traveling with the baseball team to the PBR National High School Select tournament in March. In total, he captured over 20 minutes of content from the three days; he put together four vlog videos that have totaled over 33k views between Instagram and Youtube.

This content put Wizgird on the map; he was able to receive an internship opportunity from PBR Illinois. Throughout the summer, Wizgird was able to balance multiple clients, including Country on Western at Barney Callaghans and Chicago FC United.

People get paid to be up close to the action, and Wizgird found his niche, continuing to pursue his passion at the University of Missouri.

Networking is a top two necessity for continuing videography; you don’t get to be on the field shooting SEC football games if you don’t know the right people. Nathan Samel (@nathansamel), fellow creative personnel on the football team, followed Wizgird on Twitter. Samel reached out and was able to connect Wizgird with the right people, and he was able to start working with the volleyball team the day he stepped on campus.

Wizgird noticed the big step it takes to be able to work at the college level. At Brother Rice, he was able to do his own thing and have lots of fun with it. At Mizzou, the media program is significantly more structured and demanding. After games, Wizgird has a small period to edit his videos on specific plays and get them to the coach, who releases the videos to social media.

It’s only week 3, but Wizgird has plenty of new work already up for the Mizzou football (@mizzoufootball) and volleyball (@mizzouvb) teams.

Wizgird hopes to inspire a new generation of content creators by giving them examples of how to get involved. With every resource Brother Rice has to offer, there’s no better place to be than here. Joshua Torres ‘25 (@j.visuals.10) has begun to capture content for Brother Rice and said there was no better role model than Wizgird. Although Torres is a “padawan”, he hopes to one day become a Jedi knight, with the camera as his lightsaber.