Cody Guerrero
Equinox Staff
For students, parents, alumni, recruits and college sports fans who can’t make it to the field or gym on game day, Fast Break Broadcasting brings the action to them through their computers.
Due to the dedicated efforts of many students and staff, Fast Break has been a tremendous hit for Owl athletics and covers all of Keene State College’s varsity sports home games as well as select away contests and tournament games, according to KeeneOwls.com.
KSC Athletic Director John Ratliff encouraged the expansion of Fast Break to begin doing broadcasting for all of KSC’s varsity sports, “We really want to treat each of our teams equally and fairly,” Ratliff said. “It became a really big hit when the basketball games began being broadcast through radio and it just encouraged the program that much more to expand it to all sports.”
Gino Vallante, a KSC graduate and the L.P. Young Student Center Program Coordinator, brought the organization to life and continues to be a big part of all that Fast Break does.
“It all got started about eight years ago when I was doing some radio work for the Keene Swamp Bats,” Vallante said. “At first we were just broadcasting men’s basketball games via radio and it steadily grew to broadcasting all of the KSC sports and streaming those games via video.”
As more teams began to jump on board and Fast Break did more and more broadcasts, it was clear that more hands were needed in order to keep up with the rapid growth.
There was greater need for announcers, equipment and most importantly Internet speed to handle the quantity of broadcasts to make it all come together, Vallante said.
“Our growth allowed for me to get more students involved in what we were doing,” Vallante said. “I targeted both journalism and communication majors and with that came opportunity for internships which got more students interested and the growth from that point on has been tremendous.”
Vallante also said that many students have gone on to work in media related jobs after their time with Fast Break which shows just how valuable the experience is that they get while broadcasting a live game.
Fast Break did 27 broadcasts in its inaugural season and 117 broadcasts were done last season, indicating just how much the program has grown, according to KeeneOwls.com
“The athletic program really made the strides to make this the best product out there in terms of live college sports streaming and I truly believe that we are pretty close to that,” Vallante said
Nick Feuerbach, a KSC senior who broadcasts with Fast Break said it’s an experience that makes him happy every day he does it. Feurbach said, “I was always interested in both sports and in media.”
He added, “I saw that my strengths could be utilized and that I had an opportunity to learn about some other sports like field hockey and lacrosse and it became something that I was really excited to be a part of.”
Feuerbach also said that a lot of work goes into the broadcasts before they even hit the air, he explained.
“I’m always looking at stats for players and teams as well as learning about the coaches and learning everything possible about the opponent.”
He added, “There is a lot of air time that needs to be filled and you don’t want to have any dead air throughout the broadcast because keeping your listeners engaged is the most important thing.”
Fast Break is now a sensation for everyone who follows sports at KSC. Gino Vallante said the feedback couldn’t be better.
“We are getting about 1,000 listeners for each game that we do and sometimes those numbers get even higher depending on the game, but what it indicates to us is that we have a following and we are established,” Vallante said.
“The number of hits we get for a game is tremendous and we have received nothing but positive feedback on it because those who live far away are now able to follow our program and it puts our program ahead of the curve in a lot ways.”
Fast Break Broadcasting looks forward to the men’s and women’s basketball season that starts on Nov. 15, 2012.
Cody Guerrero can be contacted at cguerrero@ksc.keene.edu