{"id":3185,"date":"2024-05-16T02:03:18","date_gmt":"2024-05-16T02:03:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/?p=3185"},"modified":"2024-05-16T02:05:58","modified_gmt":"2024-05-16T02:05:58","slug":"woas-2023-24-awards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/?p=3185","title":{"rendered":"WOAS 2023-24 Awards"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">WOAS-FM Awards for 2023-24\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Student volunteers from the Ontonagon Area Schools were recently recognized for their contributions to WOAS-FM 88.5.\u00a0 The radio station is owned by the school district and operates from the studios located in the K-12 school library.\u00a0 Some of the service awards bear the names of past WOAS-FM managers in honor of the faculty members who have overseen the station\u2019s operations since it went on the air in December of 1978.\u00a0 The station\u2019s current general manager, Ken Raisanen, has been at the helm since 1997.\u00a0 Raisanen has continued volunteering to manage the station since his retirement in 2018 with on site assistance from Library Aide Betsy Guilbault.\u00a0 Following are the awards the student volunteers earned for the 2023-24 school broadcast year:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Senior DJs: <\/b><b>\u00a0<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Matt Immonen <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&#8211; S4SD \/ DbD9 Team Member &#8211; Jim Bradley \u2018Mr Reliable\u2019 Award (Matt has been responsible for getting us on the air each day for the past two years) &#8211; Mike \u2018Zenith\u2019 Bennett Senior Service Award<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Hunter Badgero <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&#8211; S4SD \/ DbD9 Team Member &#8211; Thomas G. Lee Volunteer of the Year Award &#8211; Mike \u2018Zenith\u2019 Bennett Senior Service Award<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Adam Immonen<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> &#8211; S4SD \/ DbD9 Team Member &#8211; WOAS-FM Student Manager &#8211; Thomas G. Lee Volunteer of the Year Ward &#8211; Mike \u2018Zenith\u2019 Bennett Senior Service Award<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Darius Manos<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> &#8211; S4SD \/ DbD9 Team Member &#8211; Thomas G. Lee Volunteer of the Year Award &#8211; Mike \u2018Zenith\u2019 Bennett Senior Service Award.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0All of our morning DJs would qualify as our \u2018Most Improved DJs of the Year\u2019 winners because they all began the year as rookies.\u00a0 They learned and improved steadily and were always available when jobs needed to be done (thus the multiple Volunteer of the Year\u2019 awards).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0A new Communications class appeared on the OASD schedule this year and instructor Tim Nelson offered to have his students get involved with WOAS-FM.\u00a0 Dubbed the \u2018NelComms\u2019, these students took a little longer to learn the ropes as they had to rotate their scheduled hour so\u00a0 all could get studio time.\u00a0 Two of these students, Jack Nelson and Violet Amos, were introduced to running the studio and they in turn trained the rest of the NelComms.\u00a0 By the second semester, all were performing their DJ duties with ease and learning to communicate with their audience both on the air and via the station website, <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">www.woas-fm.org<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.\u00a0 It has been a real pleasure to watch them grow into the DJ gig and develop \u2018on the air\u2019 personalities..<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0All of the NelComm DJs will be given awards acknowledging them as NelComm DJs and as S4SD &#8211; DbD9 Team Members.\u00a0 The NelComm DJs this year were:\u00a0 <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Abi Pestka,<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Jack Nelson<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Tim Kniprath<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Violet Amos<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Jackie Cahill<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Craig Sullivan<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Jacob Burrows,<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Julia Manos.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Many thanks go out to instructors Tim Nelson and Betsy Guilbault for their efforts keeping this year&#8217;s WOAS dayshift on track.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Two special events took place this year and bear mentioning here.\u00a0 The first was a result of our fundraising efforts to purchase a new transmitter for WOAS-FM.\u00a0 A team from the NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt visited the school in October 2023 to do a feature on the station.\u00a0 Even though they were only weeks into their training as NelComms, <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Jack Nelson<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Violet Amos <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">were pressed into service as spokespersons for WOAS FM.\u00a0 With the four senior DJs unavailable, Jack and Violet stepped up and did a great job representing both the station and the school district.\u00a0 NBC reporter Maggie Vespa had nothing but praise for the poise they showed in front of the cameras.\u00a0 Violet and Jack were again pressed into service when sports reporter Jake Durrant came to interview Jack and Violet for WJMN TV3 from Marquette.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The second event was the ninth annual safe driving campaign locally known as Don\u2019t be Distracted.\u00a0 Students are told at the beginning of the year that working at WOAS-FM meant they were automatically signed up to volunteer for this student run program funded by a grant from the Ford Motor Company and the State of Michigan.\u00a0 Two non-DJs volunteered to help create artwork for the elementary coloring contests that were part of the DbD9 campaign.\u00a0 <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">AJ Rowley<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Kylee Uotila<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> were recruited by art aide Betsy Guilbault to create this year\u2019s coloring contest pages.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0WOAS-FM 88.5 thanks all our student volunteers for their efforts and we wish our departing seniors nothing but the best in the years to come.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Top Piece Video:\u00a0 We will let Three Dog Night help us CELEBRATE our fantastic student volunteers!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p class=\"excerpt\">WOAS-FM Awards for 2023-24\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Student volunteers from the Ontonagon Area Schools were recently recognized for their contributions to WOAS-FM 88.5.\u00a0 The radio station is owned by the school district and operates from the studios located in the K-12 school library.\u00a0 Some of the service awards bear the names of past WOAS-FM managers in honor of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,8,7,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-from-the-vaults","category-local-music-news","category-woas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3185"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3185\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3188,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3185\/revisions\/3188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}