At the end of most of the seasons we like to acknowledge the hard work of some of the best high school athletes in Northwest Arkansas. The NWA Media sports department will write a series of feature stories on the student athletes and the photo department will produce the portraits. In years past, we have taken the portraits piece meal, with photographers in different zones taking care of the art here and there. The past two times we have done this we have asked all the athletes to come and meet at the Springdale office where we set up a backdrop and take all the pics in just a few hours. This gives the images a unified look and really saves time in the long run.

This time we decided to have a theme to go with the photos. The sports editor, Chip Souza, and I decided to have more fun with the photos than in years past. Chip bought a bunch of different toys to use in the photos that relate to the sports the students played in, like floaties and my children’s kiddie pool for the swimmers and divers,  a sports writer brought his kids basketball plastic basketball hoop for the ballers and one of the best was a World Wrestling Entertainment heavyweight championship belt for the wrestlers.

For this to work properly we needed the participation of the students as well. Thankfully all of them were willing to give it a try. Here are the photos we used for the swimmers and wrestlers and some of the out takes. I’ll make a separate post for the basketball players.