Football on Film

If you want to jump back in time back to the days of Mike Mickelson and Jeff Herder and the Friday nights when the Scrapper football team played in the area that is now known as Sebastian Park, you can, thanks to Steve Carter. While Carter might not have been the best player on the gridiron for the Scrappers, he’s doing his best to share memories of his era with all Scrapper fans.

Carter, a 1981 graduate of thenTracy High School, is continuing his work on a project that is bringing the past to life through technology.

For more than a decade, Carter has had in his possession game films that he received from former coach Gale Otto. It wasn’t until recently that he decided to do somthing with the films.

“Gale became a good friend after I graduated, and he knew I was in the broadcast industry,” Carter said of Otto. “He had the wherewithal with these films — rather than throw them out, they would be of some value one day and have some appeal to people. Today’s technology allows us to share things with everyone.”

Carter was living in Denver, CO, when he received the film, which dates back to the 1972 season (Class of 1973). As he watched the recordings on an 8-mm projector, the thought of sharing the film with others came to him. “Back then, there really wasn’t any way to distribute them — this was before social media,” he said. “I remember making some DVDs for Don and Doug Hansen — they were part of that ’73-’74 group of guys.”

That project was nothing compared to his current undertaking, which was in the back of his mind for years. A conversation with his brother-in-law, Eric Nelson, sparked a fire under Carter to do something more with the films. It didn’t hurt that Carter has a deep background in television production.

“I wanted to keep the films in my possession, since I moved them across the country three times, and now was the time to do it,” he said. “I shelved it because I didn’t want to be making DVDs for everybody, and back then there really wasn’t a way to distribute the film.”

Carter started by putting the Scrappers’ 1980 season on YouTube. He did so by shooting the film on a wall through the projector and recording it. Carter’s project isn’t finished, but he now has about 28 games processed and up on the YouTube site. The films have been converted to high-definition, yet they vary in quality, based on film quality.

Games can be found at tracyscrappers.com; there are currently about 30 games available to watch. “You can binge on episodes — I’ll be loading up about five games a week for anybody who’s interested in watching the games,” he said. “My ultimate goal is to get them back out there for people to watch and enjoy.”

By tracking the analytics, Carter has ascertained that most of the viewing of his project so far has been done on smart phones. “That’s the beauty of it — people can just take these with them and show them to their grandkids,” he said. The videos also come with game stories and comments from Coach Otto that appeared in the Headlight Herald.

Carter, who grew up in Currie, is currently the general manager of the NBC station in Portland, OR, and his TV production got its roots at Southwest State University (now Southwest Minnesota State University) in Marshall. After college he worked in marketing for KSFY in Sioux Falls, and in 1995, he joined the marketing department in KUSA in Denver, CO, where he spent two decades. He earned his first general manager position in Portland ME, and worked there for five years before returning to Denver. He moved to Portland three years ago.

It’s that background that has allowed Carter to continue his project — that, and some patience.

He said the digitizing process of each game film takes about three hours. “It basically takes a still, digital picture of every frame,” he said. “Then it strings them all back together, which is kind of a neat process, because it really does replicate the film as it is — when it was originally made.”

Carter added that back in the 1970s, coaches didn’t record games in their entirety; they were mostly recorded for scouting purposes. “They only really recorded 70% of the games,” he said. “If all the scoring happened in the fourth quarter, it’s probably not on the film; I made a footnote of that on the site — your favorite memory of this game might not be on the film.”

While there is currently plenty of footage for people to take in, there is more to come, Carter said. He is also looking for old rosters from teams from the ‘70s. His project has made him appreciate how his mother kept a scrapbook full of old Headlight Herald clippings from during his three years playing for the Scrappers. “I have this scrapbook, and I’m adding that to each game,” he said. “It’s great to be able to read a little bit about the games, or about the teams.”