DeForest alum Keegan Harder builds sports video career

Harder has experience with DeForest sports. In 2016, he was the starting quarterback on the football team. He threw for over 1,200 yards on the year, per wissports.net.

Keegan Harder was the starting quarterback for DeForest's football team in 2016, throwing for over 1,200 yards.

Growing up, sports have always played a role in Harder’s life. He loved sports so much he used to wake up at 5 a.m. just to watch the NFL Network. He said his mother can attest to that.

Now, a decade later, Harder has continued to funnel his passion for sports into his filmmaking, while also giving back to the community that helped shape him when he was a high schooler.

Fall, winter or spring, Harder is a prominent presence inside DeForest’s fieldhouse or on the turf sidelines at DMB Community Bank Stadium. Filming DeForest sports has become a full-circle moment for him, further illustrating his deep-rooted connection with DeForest.

“It means the world,” Harder said. “It’s the entire reason why I do it.”

Harder jokes with people that he doesn’t want the athlete’s highlights to look like his highlights 10 years ago — grainy press box footage where one couldn’t even point out where the ball is, let alone where the person on the field actually is.

Instead, Harder wants his audience to feel like they’re the ones on the sideline by not only capturing key moments of the game, but also the emotion and the atmosphere surrounding them.

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“I just love putting myself in their shoes,” Harder said. “Having 4K crystal-clear footage on the sidelines, not just for the great plays and the big catches and everything, but the celebrations afterwards…To see and hear what it sounds like after an interception on the sidelines.”

More than anything, however, Harder wants his videos to best serve as “time capsules.”

“When these kids are in my shoes in 10 years, they can pull up a video and say, ‘Hey, look, this is me, this is me playing.’ It’s not all about going pro or getting scholarships. It’s just so they have something that they can show.”

As Harder still move upward and onward in his ventures, he said the most rewarding part of his job isn’t the increase of social media followers and media attention that’s come with his success.

Particularly, there’s an interaction that was among the notable performers to him. This summer, he was filming a new athlete for the very first time. Later, he learned that the athlete had spent his summer mowing yards to save up enough money to purchase one of his highlight videos.

“He’s busting his butt mowing yards so that he can get a video for me,” Harder said. “Like that’s awesome.”

Moments like these have served as the most rewarding part of his work. As he soon enters the hustle and bustle of the 2026-2027 high school sports season, many of the athletes he filmed as a freshman are now heading into their senior seasons.

“As specific and special as these moments are, I think the whole entirety of it and watching them grow up is really just kind of what makes it worth it,” Harder said.

Harder said he wants to continue to grow, but keep his local touch to highlight the many student-athletes who fly under the radar.

Looking ahead, Harder wants to continue to grow KHarder Media, but not too much.

Rather than chasing professional highlight reels, Harder wants to continue to focus on his bread and butter: local area teams.

He likes doing smaller stuff, he said. He likes doing it for the people who wouldn’t necessarily get recognized. He likes doing it for the people who fly under the radar — the ones who don’t steal the headlines on the front page of the sports section.

“I hope to continue to grow, but at the same time, I want to stay around here,” Harder said. “ I want to keep providing content for the community I grew up in and the people around here. There’s no place like home.”