“To be honest, the formula never changed,” he says. “My goal was for high school football to feel like its own ‘SportsCenter.’ Give me the scores, give me the highlights, tell me what it means.”

At the height of Preps Sports Extra, he dispatched eight TV crews every Friday to games around the metro and beyond. He recalled in amazement a playoff game between Stillwater and Moorhead.

Shaver really wanted video footage but sending a crew to Moorhead by car wasn’t a realistic option. The news director offered an idea: Why not rent a plane and fly there?

“This is no lie,” Shaver says, laughing. “We rented a single-engine plane at Flying Cloud, put a photographer in it, flew him to Moorhead to shoot the first half, get back in the plane, fly back to Flying Cloud, our live truck was sitting at Flying Cloud to send us the video and we got it on the show.”

“Can you imagine even thinking of doing that today?” he says.