Website had large audience for Tuesday’s Fort Loramie at Anna game

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ScoresBroadcast.com’s coverage of the Minster at Versailles girls basketball game on Thursday, Jan. 25, has a chance to approach SCORES listenership counts for the Fort Loramie girls state semifinal on March 15, 2013, and the Jackson Center girls semifinal on March 16, 2017.

“I have become pretty well-informed about small-school hoops in Ohio,” said CEO Todd VanTasel of Christian Netcast, which has performed the hosting and serving for the ScoresBroadcast.com website since 2007.

“Number one in the state versus number one in the state coming up on Thursday. I need to make sure all of those fans joining online don’t blow the top off our server.”

Nearly 4,000 IP addresses joined ScoresBroadcast for those girls state tourney games in 2013 and 2017. Minster, top-ranked this week in Division IV, and Versailles, top-ranked in Div. III, could command that kind of an audience, too, noted Chuck McBee, the online color announcer.

“The two programs are a combined 30-2 this season,” McBee said. “It will likely be a battle of scoring runs. The team with the last fourth quarter surge may pull out a tight victory.”

When SCORES leaves Shelby County to cover high school sports, it often webcasts games in the nearby Midwest Athletic Conference (MAC), usually from Minster and Versailles.

SCORES is the Shelby County Online Radio Entertainment System. The online service performs play-by-play of more than 100 high school contests each year in Sidney, the Shelby County Athletic League (SCAL), and MAC.

McBee is joined by Jack Kramer for Thursday’s webcast pregame at 7:10 p.m. Tip-off is at 7:30.

A late offensive surge and tenacious defense by the home team decided Tuesday’s SCAL thriller on SCORES. Anna handed the Fort Loramie boys team its first loss of the season, as the Redskins went nearly 16 minutes without a field goal in the second half and overtime.

“That game was a great example of the ebb and flow that can exist in high school basketball. Anna wiped out two 13-point deficits,” McBee said. “Because our contest ran so late and it was a light night for high school hoops, we captured another huge audience.”

VanTasel detailed that the SCORES listenership for Tuesday’s lengthy overtime event exceeded the count of IP addresses for the Anna-Versailles game on Dec. 27 and fell just short of the audience for the Fort Loramie-Versailles contest on Jan. 9.

The annual MAC showdown between the Minster and Versailles boys teams is covered Friday night by SCORES. The Tigers are ranked No. 8 in Div. III and the Wildcats are ranked No. 9 in Div. IV. Webcast time is 7:10.

A tough road weekend continues for Versailles on Saturday when the Tigers, unbeaten in the MAC and holding one more win than Marion Local, make the short journey to Russia. The Raiders, technically, have a one-half game lead in the SCAL. Webcast time is again 7:10.

Two fast-improving girls clubs, Fort Loramie and Miami East, collide in the SCORES Saturday matinee at 2:10 PM.

Staff report

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