New hires in the Athletics Media Relations department bring diverse perspectives and allow for great experiences for the sports webcast team.

Currently, Athletics Media Relations has 13 students working on athletic webcasting.

Students are tasked with running the webcast of most home games. One student works the camera, focusing on following the ball, while another student runs a computer program – called Tricaster Production Switcher – that helps the student move between the live stream video and preprogrammed commercials.

Seth Wilson, athletics media relations intern and video coordinator said, “Once the game starts, they’re running it [the webcast].”

Chris Macaluso, assistant director of media relations, put out the application for students about the third week of August. He said the response to the application was immediate and that they had several dozen applicants. The positions were filled prior to Labor Day. Macaluso said, “We’re very pleased with the turn out and quality of applicants.”

When looking for students to hire, Macaluso and Wilson were not looking for a specific type of student. Out of the 13 total students working, eight were hired in the most recent search. Their majors range from kinesiology to journalism and mass communications, engineering and even a grad student.

Students working for Athletics Media Relations should expect to work about two to three events per month with the number picking up once crossover season begins in October.

With the switch to Division 1, Macaluso said, “There’s an expectation, a demand, that a majority of your home events are web streamed to a larger audience.”

Last year athletics live-streamed over 100 home games.

“We have never had to cancel a web stream because we couldn’t get someone to run a camera or Wirecast,” Macaluso said.

While both Macaluso and Wilson placed importance on the live-streaming, they also placed emphasis on the importance of their students’ experiences. Macaluso said, “Seth and I kind of made it a point in our interviews to let the students know that we don’t just want them punching in, punching out, running the camera, running the Wirecast, not getting anything else out of their athletic experience.”

Students are encouraged to use this experience as access to those within athletics who have experience in what the students are interested in – whatever that may be.

If you are unable to make a game, be sure to tune in to the game webcasts! You can find the webcast on acusports.com under the multimedia tab or look on the team’s schedule for a button that will direct you to Stretch Internet to view the game. Audio is free, while video is $7.95 and football is $9.95.