New documentary spotlights Varina High's 2023 state basketball title

A new documentary released this month chronicles the Varina High School boys’ varsity basketball team’s march to its second straight Class 4 state championship earlier this year.

“Built on Route 5” is a 34-minute production that includes interviews with players and coaches, interspersed with highlights from the team’s 59-56 championship game victory over E.C. Glass High School and video from locker room speeches during the game.

It is the work of Newviews Productions, owned by Varina native Tyrone Nelson, Jr., who said he wanted to capture the growing sense of pride in Varina High School athletics “and expound upon it to see how the coaches, and more importantly the kids, embody that culture.”

The project also was a natural fit for Nelson’s company for another reason: it had produced another Varina athletics documentary five years earlier about the school’s 2018 basketball state championship.

“It just felt right to pour back into the community that gave us our initial shot to tell stories, because looking back, we probably wouldn't even be here without that initial doc,” Nelson said of his company, which now employees a staff of designers, content creators, videographers, cinematographers and project managers.

The documentary took a number of months to produce, Nelson said, in part because of the time required with any large-scale project and also because of an unexpected hiccup along the way (a corrupted hard drive that had to be sent to California in order for the data to be rebuilt and recovered).

“We had to come back to the drawing board and see if it was worth continuing, and the consensus was a resounding yes,” Nelson said. “To the team, it didn't matter how much it was worth. The story was worth it regardless. All the footage wasn't recovered, but we worked with what we had and made the best project we could with what we recovered.”

Nelson expressed thanks to the Varina coaching staff, players and community for their support of the project.

“I’m just thankful to be in this position and thankful that I can put on for Route 5,” he said.