by Matt Carroll
“Fitchburg State University athletics has the best live webcast in the region,” says senior Daniel Beaulac. Beaulac is the voice and man behind all live webcasts for the Falcon Sports Network (FSN). At the age of 25 Beaulac, a computer science major, has used his abilities to improve FSN’s live webcast to make it a better and more efficient program.
In 2010 Beaulac arrived at Fitchburg State with a desire to announce live games. With the assistance of the athletic department, Beaulac was able to start as a volunteer on the public address system, working his way up to a commentator on the live webcasts. Over the past four years Beaulac has announced 205 live games at Fitchburg State University.
In his first year with the FSN team he was a volunteer. In 2011 he was able to become a full-time student; at that point he learned how to use the webcasting system. Beaulac said he first noticed when doing stats at a hockey game that the live webcast could use improvements. At this point Beaulac made it his duty to improve the broadcast of the webcast.
Since then, the athletic department has come up with a team for Beaulac to work with. With these new FSN workers the webcast is able to shoot from three different cameras during live games. With the video assistant, Beaulac announces and controls the scoreboard that we see on the live webcast posted on the Falcon athletics page every game.
FSN does not take on live web feeds of the Fitchburg State football games; Fitchburg public-access station FATV has all rights to these live broadcasts. But this has not stopped Beaulac in his desire to commentate on games. This past season the athletic department and FATV have been able to work out an agreement so that Beaulac is able to commentate on these games on their live feed. With this agreement made, Beaulac has announced every sporting event at Fitchburg State University. Though Beaulac does enjoy working all sporting events, he says, “Ice hockey is my favorite game to work.” Beaulac has made it his goal to not just produce the best Sport Networking program in the conference and region, but to be the best at the Division III level.
Beaulac is in his last year at Fitchburg State University, and he is still unsure of his future plans. Yet Beaulac is confident that the skills he has learned will help him find a place in the workforce. He has said that he would like to come back to Fitchburg State, and help out with the live webcast. Before Beaulac leaves, he hopes to set up FSN with the technology and knowledge to continue the success. Beaulac has been training the staff at FSN to run the live webcast without his assistance in the hopes FSN can still be successful when he leaves.