Humans of BHS: Drake York

Drake York is a senior at BHS. He is a 4th year member of the Live TV at BHS. You might have seen him in various BCSC TV live broadcasts doing play by play commentary. Drake was about five years old when he first got on a MIC to comment on racing. Racing was his first interest given that his dad raced for about 20 years back when they lived in California. Drake lived in California for 14 years before he moved here to Indiana. He said that the one reason why they moved here was because of the racing and there was more career opportunity for his dad.

Here at BHS, Drake is a dedicated member of the Live TV or the Extended play club. He covers various sports like volleyball, soccer and sometimes he does sideline reporting for the football games.

Outside of school, one of the challenges Drake faced was being young when he started commenting on racing. He commented that “not a lot of people want to take chance on a ten-year-old boy.” Since then, a lot has changed since Drake now has a job working for USAC (United States Auto Club).

The United States Auto Club is one of the sanctioning bodies of auto racing in the United States. From 1956 to 1997, the organization sanctioned the Indianapolis 500. Drake describes working for them as an incredible opportunity. Working at USAC means that Drake is always busy, and he gets to travel a lot.

As a senior in high school, he plans to go to college at either Ivy Tech or IUPUI to study Broadcast Journalism. His long-term goal is to make a career being a commentator: “I feel like I have put myself in a good position to make it a full-time career.” As a commentator, Drake doesn’t get a lot of attention for what he does. He says that the goal of every commentators is to “almost stay out of the way.” He adds that to be a commentator is an important job. He says, “I for one find it boring if I don’t hear anything.” Being a commentator enables him to have a connection between himself and the fans of various sports.

Drake also gets to build meaningful connections with his partners because he is never working alone. At USAC, he works with Kristy Beemer and at BHS, he works side by side with Lucas Watson who is also a senior at BHS. Drake adds that being a part of BCSC-TV has been more meaningful to him than he thought it would be. He comments that “We are very fortunate at Brownsburg to have what we have” because there aren’t a lot of openings to do it professionally. He hopes to break into the industry, and he plans to do it for a long time.