2/21/23
By Kevin Taylor
Alma Schools
Some kids grow up dreaming about becoming professional basketball players, astronauts, and presidents.
Evin Shibley aspired to become a voice actor.
But, with a bit of a curveball, he may have found a second calling as well.
It’s 2:16 p.m. and Evin Shibley is peering out the window as Alma’s green coach bus barrels down the Interstate. Nibbling on a box of Reeces Peanut Butter chips, the Alma senior is one of Matt Farrell’s hand-picked Airewaves Media members who, with the guidance of Anderson Terry, will help bring Alma’s Youtube Channel to life in a couple of hours with a Livestream broadcast of the night’s basketball game.
“I have grown a fondness for this,” Shibley said. “That’s not saying I have given up on my aspirations of voice acting because I still have a big appreciation for voice acting work, but I have grown to love every aspect of everything we do with Airewaves. I love my camera work and learning different editing styles.”
Evin Lamar Shibley is anything but your typical high school student. Oh, like other teenagers, he loves potato chips, Dr. Pepper, and professional wrestling. He can quote every level of wrestling with intense precision, too. “The way I look at pro wrestling is like a circus,” he said. “Some people go to the circus for the clowns, some go for the strong man or the Lion tamer; it’s the same way in professional wrestling.”
Evin Shibley doesn’t own a mobile phone and he doesn’t dabble with social media, either. Don’t bother asking him for his personal cell phone number.
He doesn’t have one.
“Evin is a great young man. He has been an asset to Airewaves Media,” Farrell said. “I’ve taught him every position needed to run a broadcast, and he’s fully capable of working in any of those positions.”
“Evin is one of the most respectful young men I’ve ever had the privilege of working with,” Terry said.
“I heard about Airwaves when I was a freshman from a couple of friends of mine,” Shibley said. “Ironically, even though I am currently broadcasting director, I did not care about anyone’s games (sporting events), I didn’t care about camera work, and I didn’t care about editing. All I cared about was that I knew I could get in front of a microphone and I could work with audio equipment.
“When I first got to high school, my first aspiration was to become a voice actor.”
Fitting in
Shibley approaches life with a straightforward approach. In reality, most kids just hope to fit in.
Shibley’s not the exception.
With Airewaves, he’s learned to adapt on the fly. He’s learned a lot about humility, too.
“The one thing I’ve learned is humility,” Shibley said. “I have been wrong on so many occasions when I was right; I’m a pretty stubborn person. I’ve consistently been wrong on many occasions and someone with more seniority has had to shoot me straight. I’ve had to calm down my ego.”
Shibley learned a valuable lesson a couple of years ago when a former classmate set him straight.
“One time I was getting to a kid working a camera, and I had been doing that camera work for a year,” Shibley said. “I thought I was Mr. Macho, and so I embarrassed him in front of the entire class. Chloe (Lewis), my director, had to verbally straighten me out.”
Ironically, Shibley missed out on Airewaves Media while going to school in Fort Smith and Pennsylvania for a couple of years. Farrell has about 30 students at Alma Middle School.
Farrell spends half his day at AMS before moving over to AHS for afternoon classes.
“We only have room for 14 (students) per class period at the high school due to the number of MACs and the amount of room in my class,” he said. “But honestly, 14 is a good number per class, especially considering I have to keep up with where each student is at any given moment when they are out collecting interviews and for their news stories.
The Airewaves crew
Farrell’s Airewaves Media classes include 26 students. There are more kids involved in the production of home games as opposed to the two kids who are assigned to out-of-town basketball games.
Working home football and basketball games takes a village. It’s a complexity of kids doing everything from cameras to grips.
“It usually takes 12 to 15 students to man each position, which includes camera operators, grips, graphics operators, replay operators, audio control, plus separate directors and technical directors for the video wall and the Livestream,” Farrell said. “Then, of course, you’ve got to feed the kiddos, too. If they don’t eat, they don’t perform and stay focused on the broadcast very well.
“There are a lot of moving parts on a daily basis.”
Shibley, Evan Sanderson, Lewis Alexander, and Jace Coleman are among the regulars who’ve made the long trips to Mountain Home, Harrison, and Siloam Springs, among others.
Shibley has already been accepted by Oklahoma State and Central Arkansas, and he’s currently leaning toward attending UCA.
He couldn’t have done anything, he’ll tell you, without Farrell’s guidance.
“He’s a very down-to-earth person; that’s how I can best describe Mr. Farrell,” Shibley said. “He kind of knows when to pick his battles when dealing with kids and not being all high and mighty. Mr. Farrell is a very chill guy; he definitely has knowledge. A lot of it, for me, is listening when I can and asking about life skills.
“He’s a guy that knows what he’s talking about.”
Home sweet home
Shibley went to Alma schools for the first six years of school, starting with kindergarten. He lived in Fort Smith for two years (2016-17 and 2017-18 at Orr Elementary and Ramsey Junior High) before relocating to Pennsylvania with his dad, Walter, for the 2018-19 school year, where he spent a year at Chambersburg Area Middle School.
He moved back to Alma to live with his mom (Deven Jones) in the summer of 2019.
“It’s been interesting,” he said. “I have been back in Alma for high school, and I’m really happy about that.”
It was in the fall of 2019 when he signed up for Airewaves Media.
Four years later, he’s in a class of his own.
“You have to trust the people that you work with that they can get the job done,” Shibley said. “And in turn, they can trust you to get your job done. That’s why the support system is so important.
“We all have trust in one another.”