More than 10,000 Canadian student-athletes participate in several sport disciplines each year, and many of those games are now webcast live or available through Video on Demand (VOD) web streaming.

March is when many of those sports enter the championship season and viewers can catch the live action, with student-produced broadcasts over web streaming portals, including Ottawa-based Streaming Sports Network.

Ross Currie, Chief Technology Officer, with IntegratingSolutions Inc. which provides web streaming services to postsecondary institutions, says school broadcasts are becoming more professional and are an ideal training ground for budding sports broadcasters, technicians and commentators.

The company hosts the free Sports Streaming Network (SSN) web streaming portal and VOD archive as a public service. Live streams are currently webcast at 350 kb/s, but plans are to expand the bit rate and collaborate with schools to multicast live feeds from various university campuses using DVTS.

As the Canadian Interuniversity Sports (CIS) official broadcaster, SSN features men's and women's football, volleyball, basketball and hockey teams from several leagues, including teams from the Atlantic University Sports League, the Ontario Federation of School Athletic Associations, Ontario University Athletics and the Quebec Student Sports Federation.

SSN is webcasting CIS women's hockey and women's basketball championships, as well as some of the men's basketball championships. SSN recently webcast Ontario University Athletics games and volleyball championships as well as soccer, football and various other finals.

"Technology can overcome the typical demographic hurdles of not many people in a very large space, and we hope that friends, family, scouts, alumni, and generally fans of the schools and sports will find it easy and compelling to visit with us on a regular basis," says company president Bengt Neathery.

SSN expects to introduce significant additions to the portal next season, including an integrated statistics package and search function.

Team and championship details, including schedule of games and webcasts, are available from the Canadian Interuniversity Sports site at www.universitysport.ca. View live feeds and a VOD archive at www.ssncanada.ca.


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