As Virgil and Tawana Valentine watched their daughter, Anya, warm up on a 30-foot-wide screen, they said they were simply glad to have a place to see the action.
“Especially with this website, it doesn’t like to work if you don’t have a fast enough internet service,” Virgil said about Pisgah High School’s online volleyball broadcast, which was being projected onscreen at the Smoky Mountain Center for the Performing Arts. “[This] is really a plus. The FPSN [Franklin Panther Sports Network] channel is awesome, but with these people, the site does not like to work, so we came here to watch it.”
Due to North Carolina High School Athletic Association rules limiting the number of spectators at games this year to prevent the spread of COVID-19, Lady Panther fans have had to resort to watching the team via livestream. Roughly two dozen relatives and fans gathered recently to watch the Lady Panthers volleyball team take on Pisgah in an important late-season matchup, live on the big screen at SMCPA. While fans might otherwise have watched the livestream in their homes through FPSN or other schools’ providers, sometimes it helps when the Smoky Mountain Center’s owner is a fan as well.
“Ordinarily, I would drive to Pisgah, if I could get in. All these people would because they’ve got kids or grandkids that are playing, but we can’t go,” said Phil Drake, grandfather of standout middle blocker Canaan Drake. “I haven’t missed any of my granddaughter’s volleyball games in three years, so I sure don’t want to miss any as a senior. … The main reason we opened this up is so people can come together and see their kids when they can’t see them any other way.”
Throughout the FHS volleyball season, Drake has opened the performing Arts Center’s theater for fans to watch the team’s games free of charge. Aside from a reliable internet connection – the only way some families can watch their players at all – the watch parties have allowed the FHS community to cheer on the team together with other fans.
Some fans in attendance didn’t have a daughter or granddaughter at all.
“Well yeah, but not to anybody playing here,” said Dick Harner when asked if he and his wife, Anita, were grandparents. “We came to watch Franklin. We like to think we’re grandparents to anybody that wants us, but we like to watch the games. We go to the games [in normal years], and we’re really thankful to Phil for putting this on so we can watch it.”
“We’ve been supporting them for three years now, and we’ve adopted all the kids,” said Anita.
In a year in which people have been forced to limit face-to-face interactions and are unable to watch their kids play in person, the Smoky Mountain Center’s watch parties go a long way toward maintaining some sense of normalcy. Drake said the center will continue hosting the watch parties for basketball if NCHSAA restrictions are not lifted before the season, but acknowledged that he would much rather watch the game in person.
“The thing I miss the most is, Canaan grins a lot when she gets a kill, and I can’t see it,” he said. “The other thing is when she gets away with something. The other night she had an obvious carry that they didn’t call, and she just had this sheepish grin on her face. She knows when she gets away with something, and I miss those things. Of course, having the mask on might protect her from the referees seeing that too, I don’t know. I just love watching them.”
Although seeing games in person is much preferable to watching them online, Drake’s watch parties have helped Panther faithful bring a little slice of the Panther den with them, even if the team is miles away. While fans can certainly watch the games from anywhere – and get a professional-grade, multi-camera broadcast from FPSN complete with color commentary for most games – watching the game with other fans adds a human element to watching their kids on a screen.
“Most definitely,” said Donna Sherrill when asked if she was glad to watch her granddaughter, Rylee Corbin on the big screen. “We appreciate Phil [for putting it on].”