Jim Cowlishaw

Taking a picture for her instagram story, Senior Grace Trebilco gets baseball players Luke O’Malley and Christian Gamez to pose in front of the score board after winning a game. Trebilco served as baseball manager all four years of her high school career, doing statistics and other jobs for the team. “At the beginning, I had a very basic understanding of baseball and how baseball works, then all of a sudden people were balking and I was like ‘what is that,’” Trebilco said. “But, I grew up with the seniors on the team, and they helped me a lot. We’re just really happy for each other’s successes, which goes back to their team motto of Mudita, which I’m really happy I got to be a part of and included in as well.” Photo Courtsey of Jim Cowlishaw

When senior Grace Trebilco was asked by her MAPS and Professional Communication teacher, who was also football coach, to join the football team’s film crew during her freshman year, she originally said no. However, she quickly changed her mind at the mention of one incentive: a letter jacket.

This marked the beginning of Trebilco’s journey with the football team. As a freshman on  film crew, Trebilco attended every 5 a.m. practice, afternoon practice, JV game and varsity game for two years. Her participation on the film crew is how the opportunity to be an iReporter for Var Austin came to her.

“Ethne [Barnes], who was on the film crew with me, took the job my sophomore year so I still did film crew for another year,” Trebilco said. “Then, her parents told her she couldn’t do it her senior year, so I got the torched passed to me and that marked the beginning of my VAR journey.”

VAR Austin, formerly known as FLX and FanStand, is a social media platform that reports information about high school sports in the Austin area through student reporters known as ‘iReporters.’ iReporters are responsible for gaining footage for mixtapes and interviewing players after the game to be posted on their Instagram which has over 80k followers. Trebilco served as an iReporter for two years, her junior and senior year, and reported on both football and basketball.

“I started filming with a potato, as I called it, at football games but it was actually more like a camcorder from 2006,” Trebilco said. “It looked, sounded and filmed like one—a potato that is. Later my junior year, Gavin Chapa’s father had a big Sony camera on the sidelines and he let me use it for a quarter. Then, he offered to let me keep it for the rest of the season, so I got a cinematic film for the rest of the season.”

However, after the 2022 football season, Trebilco decided it was time for her to get her own camera as basketball season approached. So, Trebilco took advantage of a sale at Precision Camera and bought a camera and eventually her own lens, which led her to discovering a new hobby, photography.

“[Buying my own camera] was a blessing because I had a ‘kid’ camera before, but now I have a ‘big girl’ camera,” Trebilco said. “Because I had my own camera, I started taking hockey pictures and portrait photos, and it really started my whole photography journey.”

With a new hobby discovered, Trebilco turned it into another opportunity for herself as she became the photographer for the NA3HL junior ice hockey team, the Austin Ice Bats. She was able to sit on their bench during games and practices as well as make gameday graphics that are posted on the team’s social platforms.

“It was the best thing ever,” Trebilco said. “The best part about it was just the players themselves. They came from all over the U.S. We had players from Canada, Michigan, you name it. It was really interesting to get to know them, where they come from and why they’re here.”

Along with film crew, iReporting and photography, Trebilco served as a manager for the baseball team all four years of high school.

“After football [season my freshman year], I was like ‘I like baseball’ and I thought I should manage the baseball team,” Trebilco said. “So, I asked Coach Williams, the head baseball coach at the time, if Ethne and I could be a part of the baseball team and he was like ‘yeah cool.’ I missed the initial day of baseball, so Ethne got put with varsity, and I got put with JV all by myself. Just me, a lone ranger.”

Trebilco mainly utilizes a program called “Game Changer” to do the statistics for the baseball team. After doing JV statistics her freshman year, she was moved to varsity and had more responsibilities such as managing the line-up cards and making the schedule. Trebilco earned Academic All-State her sophomore year. Trebilco said although it was a learning curve for her at first, she has found a family with the baseball team.

“At the beginning, I had a very basic understanding of baseball and how baseball works, then all of a sudden people were balking and I was like ‘what is that,’” Trebilco said. “But, I grew up with the seniors on the team, and they helped me a lot. We’re just really happy for each other’s successes, which goes back to their team motto of Mudita, which I’m really happy I got to be a part of and included in as well.”

Trebilco will attend Texas Tech University and study nursing and ASL interpretation. She plans to continue her hobby of photography and hopes to keep up with sports and portrait photography, as it has turned into a passion of hers. Trebilco said she will miss the community that her involvement with Cedar Park athletics has given her.

“My favorite thing was experiencing things with the team,” Trebilco said. “Being on the sidelines, being in the dugout, it’s just a different feeling than being in the student section. So it’s been really exciting being there for the ups and downs of their season, and I’ve really enjoyed getting to know the coaches too. It’s just like being an actual part of their community instead of being just a supporter of it. I’ll miss the excitement of it all for sure.”