Well, the dust has settled, the final scores are in, and another Leeds Varsity has finished. This was the fifth consecutive year that Leeds Met took on the University of Leeds in a range of sports, culminating in the headline rugby union match at Headingley Carnegie Stadium. We lost the match, fielding our second team, but won Varsity overall.
The general consensus seems to be that the competition is getting bigger each year, with larger numbers of students attending the matches, and a greater buzz surrounding the evening match. Certainly, the attendance at the finale was pretty impressive, with a crowd of more than 7,000 shouting lustily and good-naturedly impugning the reputation of each others’ respective educational establishments.
It was an exciting time for the News & Media team as well. We recently introduced audio to the website in the form of podcasts, and Varsity provided an ideal opportunity to create a much more ambitious type of audio presentation. Previously, we’d confined ourselves to sound clips; now we had the opportunity to a fully-featured sports package. I’d worked in radio before but I was amazed at how quickly the rest of the team picked up the technicalities of audio production, and I think the end result was very impressive.
We had hoped at one point to present a live video broadcast of the Varsity match, complete with commentators, but this proved to be a bridge too far, so we decided to try as many quick n’ dirty fixes as possible, testing what we could with free technologies. We carried a live Twitter feed of the events throughout the day, which proved very popular, and in the evening, we reported live from Headingely Carnegie Stadium, with rolling scores and text commentary, much as you’d read in a BBC match report.
The general consensus seems to be that the competition is getting bigger each year, with larger numbers of students attending the matches, and a greater buzz surrounding the evening match. Certainly, the attendance at the finale was pretty impressive, with a crowd of more than 7,000 shouting lustily and good-naturedly impugning the reputation of each others’ respective educational establishments.
It was an exciting time for the News & Media team as well. We recently introduced audio to the website in the form of podcasts, and Varsity provided an ideal opportunity to create a much more ambitious type of audio presentation. Previously, we’d confined ourselves to sound clips; now we had the opportunity to a fully-featured sports package. I’d worked in radio before but I was amazed at how quickly the rest of the team picked up the technicalities of audio production, and I think the end result was very impressive.
We had hoped at one point to present a live video broadcast of the Varsity match, complete with commentators, but this proved to be a bridge too far, so we decided to try as many quick n’ dirty fixes as possible, testing what we could with free technologies. We carried a live Twitter feed of the events throughout the day, which proved very popular, and in the evening, we reported live from Headingely Carnegie Stadium, with rolling scores and text commentary, much as you’d read in a BBC match report.
I was worried about the 3G connection in the stadium, but in the end my fears were groundless, and the text commentary worked very well, thanks to the rugby knowledge of Mark Dorey. In fact, he proved so insightful that we refused to let him go to the lavatory in case something crucial happened on the pitch and he wasn’t there to cover it.
In all, we covered Varsity with standalone web stories, a Twitter feed, photography, video, podcasts, and a live text commentary. Short of attaching web cams to our head, I’m not sure what else we could have done. It was a great example of really comprehensive coverage, and as far as I know, the only coverage of its kind on the internet.
Another Varsity victory for Leeds Met.
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