Nearly 50 BMB students, faculty, alumni and family attended the 8th annual Broadcast Alliance for Senior High (BASH) awards at Hofstra University on May 22.   

For the second year in a row, and third time in four years, BMB took home the day's biggest prize winning Best Broadcast for the BMB Morning Announcements.   

BMB also claimed first place for Best Live Sports for the BMB Game of the Week for the second year in a row, and first place in the new Wildcard Category, where BMB students created a news feature on food insecurity in the community. The group also collected non-perishable food items for Island Harvest as part of the event.  

BMB students also claimed second place for Best Community News Feature from ABC-7 for a story on the North Bellmore Fire Department and third place for a PSA on the “Impact of sugar on the Diet.”   

BMB parent and BMB Parent Association Board Member Scott Stone won the inaugural Friend of BASH award for his work with the organization in helping to establish the Broadcast Alliance as a 501c3. 

Prior to the awards, BMB students participated in the poster session, where representatives from twenty mostly Nassau-based schools had tables set up to showcase their broadcasting programs.  After the poster session students went to breakout sessions led by Hofstra faculty, Newsday reporters, ABC-7 Executives, the All American High School Film Festival and two led by BMB students.   

BMB Seniors Anthony Ciuffo and Matthew Natof and junior Mya Passanisi led a session on creating an "As Live" (where the reporter reports on a situation as if the report was airing live) by creating an "As-Live" on the spot involving their audience.   

Seniors Ryan Marr and Jake Manno presented on "Elevating your Broadcasting program."   

The conference was well attended by industry leaders and professionals with Press Club of Long Island President Cecilia Dowd on hand to judge the Wildcard Competition and Tom Oliva from the All American High School Film Fest led a session. Chantee Lans from ABC-7, Tara Rogers from Newsday and Amanda Chirco from Island Harvest were on hand to present awards while news crews from Fox-5, ABC-7, News 12 and Newsday were in attendance.   

Junior Mya Passanisi talked about the experience of presenting at the conference. 

"It was a little nerve-wracking, but also a lot of fun to share and to demonstrate what we've learned and what we do at BMB every day,” she said. 

Junior Christina Pena, who participated in the Day of Competition where students had two hours to collect interviews and then cut them together into a 75-second "man on the street" segment, was excited to get the chance to interact with so many students from so many schools in the area.