The sports broadcasting and analytics company Hudl chose the Sept. 8 football game between Bellevue West and Westside as one of their seven Must-See Matchups.
Activities director Jon Mauro said that this will highlight the sports broadcast that The Thunderbeat creates for football games, but that it wouldn’t change much of their game day routine from a technical aspect.
“We’re still gonna broadcast like we typically would,” activities director Jon Mauro said. “It sounds like they’re just going to advertise it nationally, and hopefully we’ll get some more views because there’s some high profile kids in it.”
Hudl’s Senior Marketing Manager Matt Hansen said that they looked for a combination of factors for this game to be chosen for the Must-See Matchup program, including both the athletics program and the broadcast quality.
“So Bellevue West fits that,” Hansen said. “They have a great football team, great athletics, but they also do a really nice job streaming their games. And we want to help them even level that up more.”
Hansen explained that recent change in the company has resulted in the game of the week program kicking off this year. Through this shift they have attempted to reach out to a wider audience of fans.
“In the past, Hudl has been kind of a coach, athlete platform, and now it’s open for fans,” Hansen said. “So there’s roster schedule scores, highlights, streaming, all kinds of stuff on one page for each school. And also we just launched an app last week for Hudl fans that will allow you to kind of take that experience with you on your phone.”
Choir director A.J. Reimer has been the color commentator for The Thunderbeat’s football broadcasts for five years, while his friend Jeremy Bloch calls the play-by-play. Reimer said he wants to shift the tone of his broadcast for this game to fit the higher stakes of a larger audience.
“So we do have a Bellevue West slant in our broadcasting, but this one’s gonna be way more split 50-50 because most of the people tuning in aren’t tuning in just for Bellevue West, they’re tuning in just because it’s the Hudl game of the week,” Reimer said. “So we’ll try and call it very even and unbiased.”
Reimer also explained his focus going into the game, saying that he tries to enhance the game as much as possible by researching players beforehand and sharing with the audience the application of that in the game.
“I don’t want it to be about me,” Reimer said. “I don’t want it to be about Jeremy. I want it to be about the players that are on the field and the staff.”
