Photo Credit: CFISDNews
Cypress Creek HS alum creates name for himself in NASCAR media
Eric Estepp still remembers getting his first camera from Toys “R” US as a kid.
“It was very low quality,” Estepp said. “I remember when you would go to click record, you could hear the really loud clicking of the record button on the recording, so it was very jarring and disorienting.”
As cheap as the camera may have been, for Estepp, it was priceless. He quickly developed a passion for creating content.
Now, it’s his full-time job.
The 2016 Cypress Creek High School grad is the host of “Out of the Groove”, a daily show on YouTube that provides a quick recap on the latest news in the world of NASCAR. In the decade since the first show came out from his college dorm in August 2016, Estepp has grown his channel to over 264,000 subscribers.
“I mean the opportunities I’ve had are just unbelievable,” Estepp said. “In 2016, I was literally just a fan of racing, so to look ahead and see the kind of access, the kinds of connections and opportunities I’ve had would just be really, really cool.”
Estepp first began to gain a following making stop-motion videos of his own NASCAR races. He would build a track from scratch and slightly move diecast cars around it one photograph at a time. When the photos were put together, it would look like the cars were moving on their own. Add in a voiceover, and the videos felt like a mini race broadcast.
So Estepp had some creative experience on his own, but his skills really began to blossom in Cypress Creek High School’s Audio Visual Production class.
“I learned non-linear editing, how to use Premiere, Photoshop, all the basic tools and software, and it was huge,” Estepp said. “I also took a flash animation class at Cypress Creek, so just learning those hard tools really opened up more possibilities to what I could work on, what I could create.”
From the time Estepp first stepped into her classroom, former Cypress Creek AVP teacher Jana Bulloch remembers him hitting the ground running.
“What stood out to me about Eric was his focus,” Bulloch said. “He was used to creating his own media with minimal assistance, and he was a natural director. His classmates respected him greatly. ‘Ask Eric!’ was a common phrase. He knew exactly what he wanted and would accept nothing less. If I sent Eric out on a shoot, I had complete faith that whatever he came back with would be the best possible thing.”
Upon graduating from Cypress Creek, Estepp headed west on 290 to The University of Texas at Austin to study Radio, Television and Film. Facing a cramped dorm room and a roommate, he made a life-changing decision. Instead of stop-motion videos, he would begin putting together his own video podcast on his YouTube channel.
“My senior year of high school, we were doing the weekly announcements show, and we needed to be in front of the camera speaking confidently, and there was a lot of prep, researching topics and writing scripts,” Estepp said. “I think that made me comfortable doing this show on my YouTube channel.”
He aptly named the podcast “Out of the Groove.” Estepp didn’t grow up or live in the NASCAR hotbed of North Carolina. He was a Texan through-and-through who just happened to love racing. He was also a lot younger than most NASCAR media members.
But while he didn’t take the traditional lane of motorsports journalism, he found a niche that worked.
Fans tuned in, and after a couple of years of building his show on his own, Estepp’s big moment came right before the 2019 Daytona 500. For the first time ever, he landed the opportunity to interview an active NASCAR Cup Series driver on “Out of the Groove.”
It wasn’t just any driver either. Aric Almirola was a multi-time Cup Series winner and had been half a lap away from winning the Daytona 500 the year before.
“That was a huge moment of just like legitimacy,” Estepp said. “It wasn’t an, ‘I’ve made it’, but it was a ‘Oh, enough people see the value in what I’ve been doing over here, feel like I know what I’m talking about enough, or that I can be trusted to showcase their sport, their brand, their athletes.’”
Over the following years, Estepp’s presence in NASCAR continued to grow.
In 2020, he got the chance to interview his childhood favorite driver Matt Kenseth, the 2003 Winston Cup Champion. In the final race of 2022, his show, “Out of the Groove”, sponsored The Woodlands native Brennan Poole’s car in the second-tier NASCAR Xfinity Series. And just this past year, he began partnering with NASCAR itself in a new video series where he breaks down the film of each week’s Cup Series race with the race winner.
“When NASCAR was like ‘Hey, we want to work with you on a project,’ I was wary at first because I’m like, ‘I’m supposed to be this independent journalist guy,’” Estepp said. “But they presented this idea of ‘We can get you the access to every race winner. We can get you access to all this footage,’ so I said, ‘Yeah, I love the idea of doing like a film breakdown’, and so it’s been really fun to do that this year.”
Estepp will admit it’s not the hardest job in the world, but it’s also not one he’s doing on the fly. He spends hours upon hours each day researching the latest updates and quotes from the sport, writing his scripts, filming and editing his videos, and on at least 38 of the 52 weekends of the year, he has races to watch so he can talk about them in the days that follow.
It’s a career he’s excelled in and one that his former Cypress Creek AVP classmates and teacher can look upon with pride.
“He’s one of those people who leaves an impact on everyone who meets him, and his time in my program was very special,” Bulloch said. “Seeing him go on to make a career for himself in media is both completely expected, and one of the most special things in the world.”
For Estepp, he’s truly living out his dream each and every day.
“I still pinch myself sometimes because I’m like, it is crazy,” Estepp said. “I mean, five years ago, this would have seemed somewhat far-fetched, so it is really cool. It’s an honor frankly, and I just try to do the best work I can every week.”
Source: CFISD
