It has always been the mission of the “RCN SportsTalk” show to provide news and information on more than just the “big” sports. While football, basketball and wresting receive the most feedback from viewers, and the professional and major college teams resonate with the widest audience, we have gone to great lengths to make sure we cover as many different sports in as many different schools and cities as we possibly can.
Last year, we started doing a “SportsTalk Shout-out” to people in the RCN viewing area for doing something out of the ordinary, with the main purpose of trying to find an achievement that wasn’t necessarily well documented or received a tremendous amount of initial media attention.
This fall, we came up with two additional ways to continue to spotlight our local athletes and teams in the RCN viewing area, in a way we’ve never done before.
Last month, we introduced the “Athlete of the Week” feature that we unveiled during our Thursday night “SportsTalk” show. This focuses on athletes participating in a sport other than high school football (we also focus in solely on a football player for our “Football Friday” edition of “SportsTalk”).
This segment “debuted” in September by featuring Northwestern senior soccer player J.D. Haff, who recorded a hat trick in four consecutive games. We’ve followed that up by honoring Meredith Sholder of the Emmaus field hockey team and Dana Evans of the Pen Argyl field hockey team. Forget the traditional hat trick; these two ladies scored FOUR goals in a single game respectively earlier this year in helping their teams win games. Diana Hammerstone of Easton’s cross country team outran several schools’ competitors in a dual meet last week ahead of the playoffs, and received honors for her accomplishment on our show as well.
We invite you to be on the lookout for our next “Athlete of the Week,” each Thursday, 7-8 pm, on our show throughout the upcoming school year.
Before we tell you about another new innovation for our program, there were a few more athletes, coaches and teams from the RCN region who deserve some “ink” for their recent accomplishments as well.
Former Parkland multi-sport standout and current track athlete at South Carolina, Olivia Hassler was selected as one of eight representatives of her student body to report to the federal government regarding critical academic, social and financial issues facing young people. It’s a tremendous honor for a young lady who has endeavored through hardships in her life (her story was documented on ESPN earlier this year) and she’ll be a fabulous representative who’ll do a great job in her new role.
Coach Art Corrigan of Notre Dame High School in Easton recently became the most winningest cross country coach in the United States this fall. He now has over 11-hundred wins and is still going strong. We did a story on Art last year, which you can see by going through the archives of our “SportsTalk Shop” blog here on the website or find it here on YouTube under “The RCNTV” section.
Coach Corrigan was one of two Lehigh Valley head coaches who became the winningest head coach in their respective sport this fall. Emmaus Field Hockey Head Coach Sue Butz-Stavin achieved this honor in September. Coach Butz-Stavin and her team have also been featured on “RCN SportsTalk” a number of times over the last several seasons.
Two more Lehigh Valley high school alums from rival school districts joined forces to benefit a great cause recently. Parkland’s Toomey Anderson and Liberty’s Darrun Hilliard (now playing for the NBA’s Detroit Pistons) held an event at Allen HS to benefit Kyle Kostic of Allentown—who’s going through some tough times right now. One-hundred percent of the proceeds from that event went to benefit Kyle and his on-going battle with an illness and the costs associated with it.
Last but not least…after graduating 17 seniors from last year’s team, the Salisbury boys soccer team has had an amazing fall season to date. The Falcons’ story is just one of the many local high school sports features we’ve featured on “SportsTalk” over the last two months—all of them available for you to watch on RCN’s On-Demand services.
But wait, there’s more!
Starting on Thursday, October 29, RCN-TV is looking to launch another brand new feature. Each week on our “SportsTalk” show, we’ll have highlights and details of one of the biggest high school games played during the previous week for our viewers watching us in the Washington, DC/Virginia area. With so many talented individuals and squads playing in that region, it won’t be an easy choice to see who will be in the spotlight each week, but we hope you’ll tune in and find out for yourself and enjoy our recap of our “game of the week.”
As always, if you have a suggestion for a team to spotlight or have opinion on our local sports features, whether it be in our Pennsylvania or DC markets, we welcome your feedback! Please email us at RCNSportsTalk@rcn.com at any time and keep watching RCN-TV and checking in with our blogs for the latest in spectacular achievements made by the young men and women in the RCN coverage area.
