St. Cloud, MN – The 2017 Northwoods League Champions St. Cloud Rox received another award this offseason as they were named the Northwoods League’s North Division Best Webcast of the Year today. Directors Sarah Paulus and Cayman Salitros led a Webcasting Team with a four camera all high definition broadcast for all 38 Rox home games this season.

“We are extremely proud of the work Sarah and Cayman, along with their dedicated crew, put in during our championship run,” said Rox General Manager Mike Johnson. “They really took a sense of ownership with the broadcast each night and worked to find ways to they could continue to improve the quality of the product for the viewers.”

“This year was without a doubt a very successful year for Northwoods League webcasting and television production, and that success was due in no small part to the efforts of the webcasting teams at each ballpark,” said Northwoods League Executive Producer George Giles. “The Best Webcast of the Year award is presented to a team in each division that is considered to have the best on-air coverage of a game, which typically means that their camera work, audio, graphics, and attention to detail is excellent,” said Giles.

“The Northwoods League streams all of its games during the season, amounting to over 720 games during the approximately three-month long summer season, an impressive number for any organization and by any measure,” said Vice President of Operations Glen Showalter, who directly oversees the Northwoods League’s webcasting operations. “In 2017, the games that the webcast teams produced and streamed out to the subscription paying public could be watched utilizing Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV Stick, and Chromecast, in addition to viewing on PCs, tablets, and mobile phones.  No other summer collegiate league offers this kind of quality across so many platforms,” said Showalter.

Other Northwoods League Webcast Award winners included the Lakeshore Chinooks as the South Division Best Webcast of the Year and the Bismarck Larks as the Webcasting Team of the Year.

“What we find very gratifying is that the pursuit of excellence in this category is not limited to just one location, but is also the goal of all of our teams as you can see by the work of the Bismarck Larks, the Lakeshore Chinooks, and the St. Cloud Rox, all of which were recognized this year,” said Northwoods League President Gary Hoover.

The Northwoods League has twenty teams in ballparks throughout the Midwest and each has a webcasting team consisting of at least two directors and three camera operators to cover each game. The webcasting teams streamed the games using a four camera HD configuration and upgraded webcasting equipment at all twenty of its ballparks in 2017, a project which had started in 2015 with the conversion of approximately half the teams to HD for the 2016 season.

The Rox will open their 7th season of Northwoods League baseball in late May of 2018. Season Tickets and Partial Season Ticket Packages for the 2018 season are currently on sale. For more information regarding this release please contact the Rox front office at (320) 240-9798 or visit www.stcloudrox.com.  

The St. Cloud Rox are a member of the finest developmental league for elite college baseball players, the Northwoods League. The 24-year-old summer collegiate league is the largest organized baseball league in the world with 20 teams, drawing significantly more fans, in a friendly ballpark experience, than any league of its kind. A valuable training ground for coaches, umpires and front office staff, over 185 former Northwoods League players have advanced to Major League Baseball, including two- time Cy Young Award winner Max Scherzer (WAS), two-time World Series Champion Ben Zobrist (CHC) and MLB All-Stars Chris Sale (BOS), Jordan Zimmermann (DET), Curtis Granderson (NYM) and Lucas Duda (NYM). All league games are viewable live via the Northwoods League portal. For more information, visit www.stcloudrox.com or download the new Northwoods League Mobile App on the Apple App Store or on Google Play and set the Rox as your favorite team.