EvCC is looking to broaden their horizon on marketing the basketball team with the season underway. The men’s basketball team is going to be streamed live on the internet with full commentary during every home game this season.

“We started talking about the whole idea about six months ago. We decided since radio is something that isn’t possible in the short term (because it’s not totally dependent on us), why don’t we take advantage of the technology and stream it ourselves?” said Pat Sisneros, vice president of college services.

“I sat down with the Media Services and IT and walked through the tech we needed, and determined that we needed some more equipment to do the broadcast.”

Once the technology was figured out, the next piece to the puzzle was finding a play by play announcer for the job. Jeff Rex, an announcer who has done some play-by-play for football and basketball at Skagit Community College, was hired on to announce the EvCC men’s basketball home games.

Rex is also an employee of KBRC and KAPS, two public radio stations based out of Mt. Vernon. He announced his first game last week when the Trojans hosted Shoreline Community College. Sisneros is happy with the progress so far, and with how Jeff has performed. “Jeff did a really nice job the first game.”

Sisneros has plans for the future of live streaming for EvCC sports, and explained to me his outlook on progress so far. “I would classify (this season) as a pilot, we’ll see how it goes and what the interest is.” The remaining home games of the men’s basketball team will all be streamed and more sports could be included. “We also want to add women’s basketball, but maybe not this season. We’re also interested in baseball as well.”

One potential outcome from the games being streamed live could be more exposure for players, and better chances for them to be noticed by universities. “It could happen; I think it’s a very cool technology that allows us to connect not only with people locally but also around the world,” said Sisneros.

Now that the streaming is online, Sisneros says the next step for the program is to spread the word. “We’ve just started to market it. After a little bit we’ll do a press release, so maybe the Herald will pick it up,” he explained. “We’re still interested in finding a local radio station to carry our sports, whether it’s KRKO or KSER.”

“I think it’s great that we are doing it,” said men’s basketball head coach Larry Walker via e-mail. As far as the program affecting how many players get scouted, he isn’t convinced it’ll make much of a difference.

If you’re interested in listening live to the next home men’s basketball game, you can visit the EvCC athletics page and click on the link in the upper-right corner of the page to check it out. All home games will be streamed.