March Madness

March madness is an exciting time of the year if you are college basketball fan and for the sixth year in a row the Warriors were in the NCAA Central Regional Tournament. Leaving for Mankato this last Thursday March 11th the Men’s basketball team made their 2 ½ hour trek to Minnesota State University the host of this years regional because they had the top seed in the field. Traveling with the team is was different this time around because we had some down time on Friday. As compared to during the season if the team left there was always the Friday game and then leave for the Saturday game. In those trips unpacking your things is not a common occurrence. The problem with tournament time is that you just don’t know how long you will be gone instead you pack for the long haul which is what I did. Saturday, Warrior game day, it was an early day with the 2:30 PM tip-off. The team had a shoot around at 8:00 AM. If you have never visited the Taylor Arena at Minnesota State University I would highly recommend it. For Warrior fans it is a close enough arena to drive to and I would rank it as one of the best arenas in NCAA Division II basketball. The outcome of the game was not what Warrior fans wanted to see but in the overall picture the team did finish with a 20-10 record, in a very tough conference. Also, this is a very young team and I would expect the Warrior Men’s basketball team to have a strong 2010-11 season. But as the 09-10 season this would be the end of that chapter and new one can be written this coming fall.

NSIC Semi-Final Game

Hello Warrior fans, once again we are going to the NCAA Regional Tournament as the number #7 seed. This last weekend I traveled with the men’s basketball team up to St. Cloud for the NSIC Tournament. We did our first live show on the road with a preview of the Warriors Semi-Final game vs. the Southwest Minnesota State University Mustangs. Little did anyone know if you were watching or caught the replay on youtube this show was done from our hotel room with modifications. Moving onto the next day during the game we had a live blog with over 100 people online with an active chat going for the game. This was great to see and we plan to do the same thing this Saturday for the NCAA Regional first round game, also look for a preview show this Friday as well. We are also exploring the possibility of a live post-game press conference so stay tuned for that in the next few days. As always...Go Warriors.

Warrior Sports Network

This last weekend was a start of the Winona Sports Network; a lot of networks when they start it is at a smaller stage. So when we looked at the spring schedule for athletics there was no doubt about having the baseball game at the Metrodome being broadcasted live on winonastatewarriors.com. The actual unofficial start of WSN was two weeks earlier when the Warrior Gymnastics team took on UW-Whitewater here in Winona

The game might have started at 12:00 PM but our day started at 5:30 AM and with rush hour traffic it took us until 9 AM to reach the Metrodome. We were broadcasting out of the booth that ESPN and Fox Sports does their games out of and it is always cool to think of all the people who have been in that booth. Thanks to the Mass Communications Department here at Winona State for letting us use some of the cameras to make our video broadcast work. There was a lot riding to this broadcast because of the interest created by starting our own network and presenting an away game.

Everything worked well at the Metrodome and it was too bad that the Warriors finished the day with a split. The great thing is that this isn’t the end of WSN and we will have more broadcasts later this spring and for the 2010-11 school year. So look for big and better things to come from WSN in the near future. By the way if you are interested you can find a replay of the game on the newly started Podcast site on Itunes, you can find the link on winonastatewarriors.com. As always, Go Warriors!!!!