Why I Made End of Season Highlight Videos for Oconee County Baseball
It takes time. A lot of time to create an end of season highlight video. First off, you have to actually be at all of the games filming almost every pitch. Most of the time - nothing happens. In the course of a baseball game there are many times a pitch is thrown and the ball is weakly fouled off or the batter takes the pitch and it’s called a ball. Countless times this happens. As a videographer, what do you do? I typically delete that type of footage because if I don’t, I get home with 205 clips to sort through and have no idea what is good and what is not.
Yeah, most of the time I’m recording a pitcher/batter sequence pitch by pitch and deleting footage that is not that interesting. But, if that constant filming doesn’t take place then there’s no way to be ready to capture the home run or the turning of a double play or the celebration the team has when scoring a run. It takes discipline, a good camera setup, patience, and plenty of batteries.
A rare image of me in front of the camera (with my camera)
For the 2024, 2025, and 2026 seasons at Oconee County High School my son, Walker was on the varsity team, which meant I was at a ton of games capturing a lot of footage. I would make short clips and highlight features of certain games for social media and if a player hit a home run or had a significant play in the field, I would send them the clip for their own personal use. Oh, and I was also constantly switching from video to photo on my Canon camera to try to get both video clips and interesting photos for Instagram. It was so much work, but I thoroughly enjoyed sitting behind home plate and filming the games.
Walker heading home from 3rd base | Oconee County vs Mountain View
Which leads me to this. I made a compilation or highlight reel for the past three seasons of Oconee County Warrior baseball. 2024 was a special year because the team made it all the way to the Georgia High School Association Final Four (AAA division). If I had to rank the three years of videos, 2024 would be my absolute favorite. I had the idea halfway through that I’d make the video similar to the intro to Top Gun — the original Top Gun from the 80s using “Danger Zone” by Kenny Loggins. It’s still probably one of my most favorite video edits I’ve ever done because it all just fell into place and the team was so exciting. The music fit so well with the visuals.
The 2025 Warrior baseball team was equally as talented, but lost out in the Sweet 16 round of the playoffs, but I still love the highlight video from that season. I get inspiration from other creators and social media accounts. One of my favorite accounts, that never misses, is the University of Georgia football creative team. I had seen them use a “Smells Like Teen Spirit” cover on one of their edits before and immediately knew I would also use that song for the baseball season. The haunting rendition by Tommee Profitt worked perfectly with some of the dark, rainy footage I had filmed earlier in the season. Because I took so many photos, I also created a photo slideshow set to Morgan Wallen’s “98 Braves” song, which really reflected the mood of the team after being eliminated in the Sweet 16 round of the playoffs.
The 2026 Oconee County baseball season just ended a few weeks ago. On a personal level, it’s been kind of sad for me that my son’s high school playing days are over — he’s now going to try to make it in the college baseball realm — but having edited two of what I thought were my best baseball videos ever for the past two seasons, I knew I wouldn’t be able to meet that level of execution. I didn’t want to try and chase what I thought was already perfection. So, I went with a classic Queen anthem with great energy, and a driving pace throughout the song that ended up working out pretty good. “One Vision” was the choice and I’m really happy that I was able to have that live as my last season highlight reel. I did it for the team, I did it for myself, and I especially did it for my son.
One more thing. Similar to the 2025 season, I felt the need to let the boys enjoy some of the photos I took of them. Here’s the slideshow of photos from the 2026 season set to Jason Aldean’s new single “Songs About Us”.
The 2026 Warriors finished with a 23-14 record, finished 2nd in region 8-AAA, but made a deep playoff run to the Elite 8. As for my son, he made me very proud. He achieved an all-region selection and won the “Warrior Award”, given to the player who shows servant leadership, accountability, dedication, respect, humility, confidence, and is a competitor. Since Walker finished his senior season with five other senior teammates I wanted to commemorate the 2026 graduates with a special video just for them. I cannot tell you how many times I teared up as I edited this and I think it came out perfectly.
Thank you Oconee County baseball. Not only did you provide me an opportunity to create, but you became a family to me, providing wonderful memories, and a helluva lot of excitement that will hopefully be remembered for a long, long time.
If you’d like to check out all of the photography and video I created for Oconee County baseball for the past three seasons, you can find it all on the Oconee Baseball Instagram account. You can follow me on Instagram here.