2008 December :: Silver Stars Nation

Archive for December, 2008

Exclusive Interview: Ben Hunt on being the Silver Stars Web Dude

By HFH · December 31, 2008 · Filed in Ann Wauters, Becky Hammon, CSKA (Moscow), Dan Hughes, Edwige Lawson-Wade, Erin Buescher, Hammonites, Helen Darling, Ruth Riley, San Antonio Silver Stars, San Antonio Silver Stars Players, Shanna Crossley, Silver Stars PR, Sophia Young, Spurs Foundation, Vickie Johnson, wnba · No Comments »

Happy New Year!!!! SSN would like wish everyone a happy, prosperous and healthy New Year. It was a great year for Silver Silver Stars fans. We got to see our team finish with the best record in the WNBA and win the Western Conference. We also got to see Becky Hammon fulfill her dream of competing in the Olympics and lead Russia to a bronze medal and show the world what it really means to have the freedom to follow and fulfill your dreams. Although the Silver Stars fell short of the WNBA Championship we leave 2008 with many things to be thankful for and even more to look forward to from our Silver Stars. So a special thanks to the players, coaches, training staff and front office for all the things they do to make this team so special.

Silver Stars Nation has been fortunate enough to have some the of the Silver Stars front office share team updates and team information with us this past year. One of the key individuals in getting this information out to the public is Ben Hunt. Ben is one of the people responsible for maintaining not only the Silver Stars website but the websites for the San Antonio Spurs and the San Antonio Rampage. Ben sat down with SSN and talked about what it’s like being part of the Silver Stars team and being the famous Web Dude we have all come to love.

SSN When did you begin working with the Silver Stars and how did you end up in the sports industry.

BH: I’ll try to make a very long story as short as I can… Growing up I always knew I wanted to work in sports. My connection to the games were usually television or radio broadcasts of games so that got me interested either calling or reporting on them. So I went into broadcast journalism at Marshall University and began getting more involved in the different forms of media.

My focus was television but I soon found myself putting in hours at WMUL (the student radio station) cutting up packages, hosting shows, producing shows, gathering sound bites, all at the same time for The Parthenon (the student paper) I was a sports reporter, worked my way up to sports editor, then online editor – as well as on camera for MU Report. Needless to say I was around all of Marshall’s teams a lot and got to know the folks in the Sports Information office quite well.

The summer of my final year of my undergrad at Marshall, the best thing professionally probably happened to me. I was going to be a part of a new college reporting network blogging, taking .mp3s of interviews and even some video footage. I was very excited about the opportunity and couldn’t wait to get started. About a month and a half after taking the job I got a call from one of the founders of the company and he said the didn’t have enough funding to get off the ground that year and he was very sorry. (They are palestra.net now, cool site – check it out.)

So after being setback there I got an internship with the Sports Information office which lead to a graduate assistantship. After a semester of being a GA and getting more experience with web publishing I applied for the E-New Coordinator with the SS&E, which of course I landed and now have been promoted to Interactive Content Coordinator.

SSN: You are responsible for all three teams for Spurs Sports and Entertainment. How do you juggle duties to ensure each team gets the necessary coverage to make fans happy?

BH: That is truly one of the toughest parts of the job. Regardless of how much time you put in toward one site you are taking away from another. It is really tough. All I can say is I try to give each team and each site as much as I possibly can.

SSN: Who decides the content of what is updated on Silver Stars website. Do the marketing people come to you with ideas you have to make work or do you come up with the ideas.

BH: The web is part of the marketing department and coming up with content is a team process. I’m usually involved from the ground up on nearly every content project and do come up with quite a bit on my own. However, there are lots of times where I collaborate or solicit content from various team members.

Leigh Anne Gullett and John Robbins (Sr. Internet Coordinator) help me a lot by either sitting down with me and just talking about things we’d like to do or I’ll use them to bounce things off of them to gauge their opinions.

SSN:. What made you decide to start blogging for the Silver Stars?

BH: The Blog is probably in my Top 5 thing I’ve done at work. After explaining my coverage while at Marshall and working in the SID office I learned very early how important it is for the Olympic Sports to get better coverage. A lot of the times the tennis team or the volleyball team or the soccer team gets less than adequate coverage.

As a reporter and an editor it became evident that quite often those are the stories and teams that you want to cover. So when I got here women’s basketball wasn’t new to me.
With the excitement of the 2007 Playoffs, John and I were the only two people running all of the Web sites. I wanted to do more last season but just getting a Playoff Central created was a huge task for me.

So this year I wanted to go as far with it as I could. I didn’t have to worry about design I just had to deliver content and a blog was a natural piece of content I could deliver during the playoffs.

SSN: Do you have the kind of fan interaction with the other two teams that you have with the Silver Stars?

BH: Not really. Not sure why that is exactly. I guess to some extent things around the Silver Stars are a little more relaxed.

SSN: How have you seen the Silver Stars franchise grow since you have been with them.

BH: Wow it’s been leaps and bounds. I made my way to Texas on the Day that Becky was traded to the team. So since I’ve arrived there has been a constant upward trend on the business side, the fan base and even the things we do on the internet.

SSN: The Wednesday Web Dude has been fun, can you give us a hint of some things you have in store for the rest of the offseason?

BH: Oh you’ll just have to see. To be honest a lot of it is random or spontaneous things I’m thinking about or going through. I try to tie it in to the teams when applicable but you never know.

SSN: Any new ideas you can give us a preview of for next seasons coverage? Will you continue with some of the live feeds you did during playoffs for things like training camp and media day?

BH: A lot of that’ll be TBD. So much of what we do is fluid, especially with a possible Spurs playoff run. But I’d like to keep up our All-Access series we did with Sophia and get more features with the players.

I love game coverage so I’m sure I’ll be looking at some way to amp that up. But we’ll have to see.

SSN: Last year for the draft party I took my lap top and blogged from the party onto our website. Is it possible we will get an official web dude blog going for 2009’s party?

BH: Well we did have an inside the draft room with Leigh Anne. But I’m definitely interested in doing as much as we can on draft day. That’ll be kicked around in our discussions to see how we cover that. But rest assured we’ll definitely be doing something.

SSN: So how do you deal with the constant Hammonite pleas of…”How about something about Becky” and not go crazy?

BH: Ya’ll are crazy. I just try to turn down the volume on some of the “pleas.”

Well I don’t think we are crazy…just dedicated. We would like to thank Ben for taking the time to answer our questions and for joining us in the SSN sand box, and continually providing us with with Silver Stars information.

Keep checking back because we will have more features leading up to and throughout the 2009 season.