Covering A-P game a natural progression for ESPN

ESPN sent a television crew to Parkersburg weeks after a tornado crushed the local high school and its adjacent football field in May 2008 and within hours of beloved football coach Ed Thomas' murder June 24.

ESPN will continue to tell both stories Aug. 28 when the network will show Aplington-Parkersburg's football home opener against rival Dike-New Hartford to a national audience.

“We've been following this story since last year and in a smaller degree just from the coverage of the tornado recovery,” said Dan Marguilas, ESPN's director for programming and acquisitions. “I think with all the events that happened this summer, it turned into an national spotlight. And the more we learned about the area, the man, the communities, the more we realized this was an opportunity to do something we don't always get to do and that's tell a story.”

Mark Becker, 24, is charged with shooting Thomas, 58, multiple times with a handgun in front of about 20 students at the school's weightlifting facility. Becker remains jailed on a $1 million cash-only bond.

Thomas won 292 games and two state championships as a head football coach.

“Normally, when the ESPN networks are involved in a game, it's because it's a specific team, or if we're doing high school we're focusing on a player that's being recruited. This is a different opportunity,” Marguilas said.

“Everybody was comfortable with this - from the family to the schools to the communities - that we can do the story justice.”