There’s a new revolution in Southland prep sports: student-run broadcasting

You need a chess master’s savvy to coach at the highest levels in Southern California high schools. Also a scavenger’s eye for nuggets of gold, for any hint of competitive advantage.

Corona Santiago girls’ soccer coach Mike Fleming has scrolled social media and, several times, stumbled upon promotions for Studio City Harvard-Westlake TV’s broadcasts of the Wolverines’ matches. It’s a free, near-professionally-run stream — and as Fleming put it, a scouting tool. So if such a broadcast is out there, Fleming said, and you’re not checking it out as a coach, you’re doing yourself a disservice.

Students host a streaming broadcast of a game on Santa Margarita High’s “Eagle TV 2.0 Sports.”(Paul Higgins)

“With Harvard-Westlake, they do a great job of producing the game with great content, with people commentating who are knowledgeable of the game,” Fleming said.

Here’s the kicker: Did he know those people are Harvard-Westlake students?

Slight pause.

“I did not know they were kids,” Fleming said.

Harvard-Westlake’s Jake Lancer is a 17-year-old who just started calling the Wolverines’ live-sports broadcasts because it was unrealistic to keep his basketball dreams alive at a school overflowing with top-tier recruits.