They’re Award-Winning, Community-Loved, and Just Getting Started

Blair Cartwright
Welcome to Mascot Media’s Talking Preps. We’re here with Joseph Gerardi from Manalapan High School and Beth English as well. They were winners of our Broadcast Awards—not only last year but this year as well—for both the Event of the Year and the Play of the Year. Thank you both for joining me today.

Joseph Gerardi
Blair, thank you for having us. We’re excited to be here.

Beth English
Yes, thank you.

Blair Cartwright
My pleasure. The Brave Cast is, believe it or not, still a relatively new program. Joseph, you started this in 2021 and are already winning national awards. Talk me through how this started.

Joseph Gerardi
Yeah, that’s kind of a good place to begin. Like you said, we launched the Brave Cast in 2021. It’s still in its infancy stages. What’s really cool is that when we started the program in 2021, it used to be taped live. The students would come together after school, we’d practice our show, and then tape it and broadcast it the next day. But on December 17 of that same school year, we switched to a totally live format. Every Friday morning, our show goes live to the entire school. Monday to Thursday, our students are prepping the script, writing segments, editing, getting graphics ready—working all week to make sure that on Friday morning, we have a broadcast for our school.

What’s also really cool is that this year, our seniors were freshmen when the program launched. They were kind of the backbone in creating all these components and really revolutionizing what we do here. I’m sure Ms. English can talk about it too—I remember sitting in her office trying to come up with a name for this program.

Blair Cartwright
Beth, tell me, when Joseph came to you, what was your initial reaction? Walk us through that process.

Beth English
I was immediately all in. A concept where kids are hyping up and promoting other kids in the school community—how can you not encourage that as a school administrator? And having such a passionate educator as Mr. Gerardi to lead that charge, I was all about it. But honestly, I had no idea how instrumental this program would be—not only to our school, but to our community at large. Having kids encourage and hype each other up—that’s what education is all about. I was all in from the start, and they have ceased to amaze me. Every time, they just keep leveling up—every broadcast, every season. We’ve gone now from covering school events, to community events, to district events, and then doing live on-air broadcasting at sporting events.

As a high school athletic director and an admin in charge of after-school activities, this is such a great platform. To have other kids encouraging other kids is remarkable. They are literally the nucleus of the school.

Blair Cartwright
When you all started this, did you have any idea it would evolve into what it has in such a short time?

Beth English
To have an educator that puts all the time and effort into this—it’s amazing. I could never have imagined what we’ve done in such a small amount of time. In all honesty, I’m just a spectator looking in. It really is the heart and passion of Mr. Gerardi, being a role model and enhancing the vision of his students.

Blair Cartwright
Joe?

Joseph Gerardi
Yeah. I was going to piggyback off of that. Right now we’re in the final month of school, getting ready for our banquet and other things to celebrate our students. I was just looking back—it’s so cool. The first photo I took when we launched the studio—everyone was in masks, and there were maybe ten students in here. Some of those students were freshmen. Now they’re seniors. Ten students trying to figure out what we wanted this thing to look like. Now we have close to 60 students involved in the program. Like Ms. English said, we’ve really expanded and are covering everything going on at Manalapan High School.

Blair Cartwright
It’s incredible what you’ve done. And the community has embraced this as well, right? What’s been the community feedback?

Beth English
The community feedback is unbelievable. The fact that we’re promoting all aspects of school activities is huge. A lot of times, the front porch of a school is its athletic programs. Brave Cast expands way beyond that. It hits every marker of every community member and alumni. We focus not only on what happens outside the classroom, but within the classroom and hallways. We highlight staff members, freshmen, seniors—everyone. It’s just amazing. It really shows what educational-based athletics and education should be about: encouraging others.

I always say this when I get an open mic—it’s a rough time to be a kid right now. The culture and society we live in can easily be negative. But Brave Cast has proven it’s just as easy to be positive. I think that’s why everyone has really embraced it. It’s celebrating positivity and encouraging fun. As much hard work and hours as go into this, you can see the smiles—not only on our newscasters’ faces, but in the community. It just proves that when you work hard and have fun, it leads to success.

Blair Cartwright
Talk about the balance, Joe—getting everyone involved, working hard, and having fun while doing it.

Joseph Gerardi
100%. This whole program was designed to spread positivity. Especially now—it’s hard to be a student, and very easy to be negative. But so many amazing things are happening in our school. Students are accomplishing things, breaking records, doing phenomenal work—and it’s our job to make sure that we are promoting that in a positive way.

Fun is a big part of that. When our scriptwriting team gets together at the beginning of the week, they really take time to create segments that students are excited about. When our anchors are walking through the hallway doing interviews, students are excited to be on Brave Cast. They can’t wait to see themselves or their friends on the show. That sense of community—everyone being excited to be part of both the production and the show itself—is huge.

Blair Cartwright
That’s awesome, man. It just fires me up talking about this—I love it. Not only are they learning technical skills, broadcasting skills, but the school is absolutely the perfect laboratory. You’ve got so many different types of events and stories to tell. It’s like the perfect place to experiment and learn. They’re also learning social skills, work skills, everything. This is really an awesome way for an individual to grow. I’m sure you’ve seen students transform from shy, quiet people into leaders, right?

Joseph Gerardi
Oh, 1000%. We call the Brave Cast a family. Our students spend so much time and effort putting into the show. Our school day ends at 2:06, and we have students staying here until 6 or 7 o’clock. Beyond just working on a segment, they’re working on things they want to add to the show.

Regardless of what they pursue as a career, whether it’s broadcasting or not, the collaboration skills, communication skills, leadership skills—those are going to be useful no matter what they do. Especially public speaking. We have our anchors in front of the camera, but our senior production team runs our meetings every Monday. We have 60 Brave Cast members in those meetings. Even students who aren’t on-camera are speaking in front of their peers, organizing the show, coordinating segments, assigning locations, writing scripts, building graphics.

This year, we started doing live interviews. The couch behind me—we bring students and staff in on Friday morning for a live interview. Our technical team figures out how to cut the cameras, move the set pieces. Once again, it’s the students figuring all of that out. These are life skills that are going to benefit them forever.

Blair Cartwright
No question about it. Beth, as an administrator, you’ve got to love all the different things this kind of program brings to the table.

Beth English
It creates multiple opportunities across the board for our student body. It proves that when kids are given a platform and support, they’re limitless. It’s amazing to see this program grow and to see the kids grow. They’re incredibly inclusive. It hits every type of student. That’s what’s remarkable.

It proves those intangible qualities that equate to success. They’re learning to be good teammates, focusing on their strengths while working on their weaknesses. What’s better than that? As an administrator, to see that happening within your school—there’s nothing like it.

Blair Cartwright
No doubt about it. And a live interview—as we’re doing this—you saw I screwed up the supers earlier. There’s nothing like a live interview to teach you how to learn on the fly. It’s a rewarding experience, because that’s real life.

So, Event of the Year and Play of the Year. First, let’s take a look at the Play of the Year.

[Play Clip Audio]
Docherty drops back. It’s a wide open man—wins! Game over! Touchdown!

Blair Cartwright
That was homecoming. As if there wasn’t already enough going on—then that happened. I’m sure you both got chills hearing that again. You can never get tired of hearing that.

Beth English
I have chills. I remember that—I was actually right at the end zone. To capture a moment like that, live action, the spirit of what’s great about educational athletics—that’s amazing. Seeing it back always makes me happy.

Blair Cartwright
Joseph, that couldn’t have been easy. Those are their peers out there. The emotion, the pressure—and yet your students stayed calm and captured it. That was very impressive.

Joseph Gerardi
Yeah. I have to take a moment and recognize what went into that. A few days ago, I was sitting with a few of our student leaders. One of our students, Dan, said something that really stuck with me—he said this program is a vessel for students to figure out what they want to do.

That entire football broadcast—that wasn’t my idea. The students came up to me and said, “Hey, Mr. Gerardi, can we live commentate the football games?” They figured out how to wire the cameras, get the technical switcher working, add on-screen graphics, how to route the commentary. They did all of that on their own. They even added scoreboards, flags on plays—everything.

They spent the summer before that season figuring it all out. Their passion and dedication is just unbelievable.

Blair Cartwright
That’s incredible. And it kind of feeds on itself, right? When the students take ownership, it’s limitless where it can go.

Joseph Gerardi
Absolutely. They’re the ones with the amazing ideas.

Beth English
100%. As a school administrator, when you see students putting in that much effort, it’s really hard to say no. So instead of saying “no,” it becomes, “How can we make this happen?” That’s where it becomes a team effort. Administration support, community support—it takes money, too. This equipment isn’t cheap. But we keep building and growing.

We’re a platform to highlight and promote the whole school community. And the fact that our students have that kind of maturity and composure—that’s amazing. I was on the sideline hugging kids and screaming! Meanwhile, they were steady and focused. Their skills continue to grow.

Blair Cartwright
No question. All right, the Event of the Year was the Spooktacular, and I really liked this because it gets into the community. Let’s take a look at that now.

[Video Plays: Students painting windows and interviews with participants]

Blair Cartwright
That’s awesome. That is high-quality work—not only great interviewing and questions, but the camera work was spot on. They told the story. That’s phenomenal. I’m sure the feedback from the community was fantastic. How can you not get excited about your community watching something like that?

Joseph Gerardi
Oh, 100%. I want to take you behind the scenes on that segment. That was one of our senior anchors, Jenny. As she said at the end, that was her first segment back in 2022 when she joined the Brave Cast.

The Freehold Regional High School District hosts the Spooktacular Window Painting Contest in downtown Freehold. All six high schools choose art students to paint their designs on windows of local businesses. Our team goes to cover it and recognize those students for their talent.

But behind the scenes, it’s great for our broadcast team. Usually, we film in the studio where everything is controlled—lighting, audio, environment. When we go into the community, the students have to figure out how to capture clean audio with cars driving by, horns, and people walking around. They have to figure out lighting, camera placement, everything.

They also have to think about how to write material with value. What questions can we ask that really show the students’ hard work? There are multiple layers: celebrating our student artists and also giving our broadcast students real-world production challenges. It’s hands-on learning.

Blair Cartwright
Beth, as an administrator, you’ve got to love that. It involves the community and shows your school in a new light.

Beth English
Absolutely. The professionalism that comes through this programming is unbelievable. When they’re interviewing the Superintendent of a regional high school district, and they’re calm and composed—that’s remarkable.

They don’t see this as just an after-school activity anymore. It started that way, but now there’s a tremendous amount of pride in it. The talent shown in that clip alone—the editing, performance value, production value—it’s incredible.

And we’re highlighting a tradition that dates back decades, giving it a fresh take and making it relevant in 2025. This is a student-based, student-written show. The amount of pride I feel is hard to express. That’s just one small example of what we do. Mr. Gerardi does a live production every Friday. The amount of work that goes into this is incredible. I’m so proud and so grateful to witness it.

Blair Cartwright
So, what’s next for Brave Cast? How do you keep building on this? I know technology constantly changes—so how do you take it to another level?

Joseph Gerardi
That’s a great question. I sat down with some of our student leaders to get their input because this is a very student-driven program.

Every Monday, we have a production meeting run by our producer, Gracie. Then we break into teams—scriptwriting, graphics, camera—and come back together to build the weekly production calendar.

Our students are always reflecting and adding something new. For example, this year we started doing live weather. While a pre-recorded segment like the Spooktacular is playing, our team resets the anchors, changes out microphones, and the stage crew brings in a green screen. The technical director overlays the green screen for a live weather report.

The first time we did it, the chroma key had some issues. It didn’t line up perfectly. But five minutes after the broadcast ended, our students were already planning how to make it better next week. That constant reflection and drive to improve—that’s what took us from 10 students to over 60 now. That’s the future of Brave Cast: continued student innovation and passion.

Blair Cartwright
I love how you credit the students. But Beth, brag on Joseph a little bit—because those students still need guidance. He’s clearly having a massive impact.

Beth English
He is everything that’s good about education. He’s a role model. He’s passionate, kind, and works incredibly hard. And people follow that.

When you care deeply and you lead with heart, people are drawn to it—especially kids. He connects with students and staff. He meets kids where they are and builds them up.

He doesn’t just give answers or point the way—he walks beside them. He builds their confidence. And he has an incredible ability to know exactly what each student needs. That’s why he’s such a remarkable educator and person.

Blair Cartwright
Very well said. If someone wants to check out Brave Cast, is there a YouTube channel? Where can people see all the amazing work?

Joseph Gerardi
Yes. We broadcast live on YouTube every Friday. Teachers tune in during homeroom, and then the episode is archived about 24 hours later.

Just search “Manalapan High School” on YouTube and it will come up. From there, you can find our website, which features additional content and behind-the-scenes coverage. Our students also run our Instagram account, which is great for showing what goes into production.

That behind-the-scenes work—the lighting, the mic checks, the camera setup—it’s easy to miss when the show goes smoothly. But our students work really hard on it, and the Instagram helps shine a light on all that effort.

Blair Cartwright
If someone’s watching this thinking, “We need to start something like this,” what advice would you give? Whether it’s a student or an educator.

Beth English
If you’re a student, the first step is finding a faculty member to support and advocate for you. This is a team effort. Mr. Gerardi is the foundation, but the program has grown because everyone has ownership in it.

Start small. Reflect, grow, keep moving forward. Reach for the stars.

Joseph Gerardi
Exactly. When we started in 2021, we had a basic camera and a couple of microphones. That’s it. The passion and the ideas are more important than the equipment. If you have that drive to create and spread positivity, that’s where it begins.

It takes a group. We have amazing support from our admin, staff, and community. When people see you’re promoting students and spreading positivity, they gravitate toward it.

Start small, stay passionate, and just keep building.

Blair Cartwright
I love that you all keep coming back to positivity. We need more of that in the world. You’re doing a phenomenal job—not just for your school, but for your community.

Congratulations on all the awards. I have a feeling we’ll be talking to you again next year. Thank you for taking the time to share your story.

Joseph Gerardi
Thank you so much again for having us.

Beth English
Thank you!