When Key West High School updated its logo this month for the upcoming school year -- to an image of a globe with a KWHS flag coming out of a Conch shell -- the school also changed its motto to "Show the world Conch Pride."

At the time, no one at the school knew how appropriate that would be for the Conch football team.

Led by First State Bank, along with the school and WKWF 1600 AM, the team will have the ability to literally show the world its Conch pride with all of its games -- home and away -- set to be shown online with live streaming video and audio of the radio broadcast. The webcasts are slated to begin with the team's preseason opener at home against Coral Reef next Friday night, the first webcast of its kind for any high school sport in the state.

"We've got a real close community down here that is real interested in sports," said First State Bank Senior Vice President Donald Lanman, who initially came up with the idea. "So I got together with my friends from WKWF and said, 'What if we take this thing to a whole new level? Let's live stream the games.'"

After getting the radio station on board, Lanman visited with other members of the community as well as officials at the school -- including new Principal Theresa Axford, who came up with the new motto before ever hearing Lanman's pitch -- and all agreed that it sounded like a no-lose situation.

If all goes smoothly this football season, the webcasts could branch off into baseball and other sports.

"It's not just limited to baseball or football or male-oriented sports," Lanman said. "Female-oriented sports would also be of value and benefit to the community, so we want to do that too. We're not trying to sell anything. It's not a money-making venture, we just want to give back to the community."

The webcasts could prove financially beneficial for the school's booster clubs, however.

At a meeting hosted by Lanman on Thursday with representatives from the school and the radio station, there were talks of providing links to allow viewers to purchase school-related items with the proceeds going to the athletic department, or even just links for people to donate money. To help get the word out, Lanman said the group will look at using online services such as Twitter or Facebook to start a viral marketing campaign.

The webcasts could also impact the school's curriculum, allowing students interested in audio/video and production to get hands-on experience and enhance the webcast by filming on the sideline or from different angles during the game.

"We would be preparing them and giving them a job skill so that as soon as they get out of school, employers are ready to hire them," Lanman said. "On the surface this just seems like streaming video, but it's not. This is all a part of a bigger idea."

Lanman also said he would love to see the webcasts stream events from the other schools in the Keys, as well.

"We want to do this in Marathon as well as at Coral Shores," he said. "I've talked to (Axford) about getting a hold of the principals at those other schools and giving them a heads-up that we've got this bright idea and whether it seems like a good idea to them. Hopefully we can use this as our beta test and work out the kinks and figure out how to take it to a new level. Theoretically, at any given Friday, you could log on to your computer and click on the Conch game or the Hurricanes game or click on all three games in different browsers."

Those tasked with running the webcasts will go through a test run at Tommy Roberts Memorial Stadium on Wednesday, and then go live on Friday night.

The streams will be broadcast on the redesigned keysbank.com, the online home of First State Bank. There is a "Keys Community" tab at the top of the home page that will direct visitors to the games.

The team already films all of its games, so the site will use that same video. The only difference is that the video streaming online will be live and not stopped between plays or during timeouts or other stoppages in play. The plan is to also film the halftime and pregame shows with a live mic picking up the sounds from the stadium rather than the radio broadcast, which will stream play-by-play from commentators Rick Lopez and Judd Wise during game action.

"We hope this helps the schools and we can give back to the community and it's a win-win for everyone involved," Lanman said.

As for that perfectly coincidental new school motto?

"Call it idiosyncrasy, karma, luck or whatever," Lanman said, "but it works for us."

Assistant Sports Editor Willis Jacobson's Gettin' the 'W' column appears exclusively each Friday in The Citizen. He can be reached at 305-292-7777, Ext. 223, or at wjacobson@keysnews.com.