UNITY — Local schools and communities benefit from personalized live-streaming options thanks to the technical wizardry of Ryan Kobelsky, a McLurg alum.
The recent live stream of Unity hosting the 3A provincial boys' volleyball championship garnered 4,200 viewers from volleyball fans from all the communities that participated in Unity, and many expressed thankfulness that games were live-streamed through a Living Sky School Division link.
There’s a man behind these missions. His name is Ryan Kobelsky. When he’s not working at the live-streaming business, Kobelsky says, he's the IT specialist at Living Sky School Division based in North Battleford. It’s similar to being an IT manager, managing money, helping the rest of the team co-ordinate work to support schools.
Kobelsky is a McLurg/Broncs alumnus from 2002. He attended post-secondary school for computer engineer technology from SIAST Palliser campus in Moose Jaw. He started as a summer student with the school division and has been a full-time employee since May of 2005, when it was still Landswest School Division.
Kobelsky says of the dive into the live-streaming business for the school division, “Ruth Weber and Sarah Shepherd. streamed a Latvia vs Austria IIHF pre-tournament world junior game in Unity in December of 2009, done from a MacBook and a webcam.
The following year, Ms. Weber’s journalism class had a student who suggested that the effort to try steaming the 2010 provincial volleyball in Unity be an option. This suggestion came one week before the event.
“We begged and borrowed equipment from UCHS and McLurg and pulled off the event. It wasn’t great, but we knew McLurg was hosting the following year, so it was an experience to build from and fine-tune, which resulted in a much better product with the UCHS journalism 20 class making the journey to cover the event in Wilkie in 2011.”
Things started to hit stride when Kobelsky learned Medstead/Spiritwood would be hosting provincial volleyball in 2012. The live-stream team created a TV studio in a box and subsequently pulled in a couple of hundred viewers in 2012. From there, Kobelsky believes the Living Sky School Division became a provincial leader in streaming high school athletics.
Other than the pandemic pause from March 2020 to Nov. 2021, this streaming system has been running consistently since 2010.
While it has been thought that an international event streamed from the pre-tournament IIHF game would have been the largest, because it was a new concept, it captured only 499 viewers. Kobelsky says that most of the two-day sports events pull in more than 2,000 viewers, and with the recent provincial volleyball in Unity, they recorded just over 4,200 viewers.
Asked what he likes about these live streaming opportunities, Kobelsky says, “Working with the students is the best part. I love showing them how to run it, and then coach them through it when they take it over and run the entire event with me just having to coach them a bit when a new group comes on for a shift. Seeing how they go from 'OMG this is scary' to 'this isn’t that bad' to seeing the outgoing group showing the incoming one how to run the show … it’s very inspiring. It also exposes me to areas of the province that I haven’t ever been to (Fox Valley, Rose Valley/Kelvington, Humboldt, Melville, Fort Qu’Appelle, Loreburn). I’m not sure there’s much to dislike.”
Although Kobelsky does affirm that some of these events can involve three or four long days from about 5 a.m. to 11 p.m., including set up, operation and take down. The Can-Am Bowl in Hafford in 2016 started the day at 6 a.m. and Kobelsky arrived home at 3 a.m., but exclaims, “Man what an event!”
The job doesn’t come without challenges. Kobelsky has covered a couple of Western Canadian fastpitch events where he is the only person providing coverage to two ball diamonds and has had to learn how to set up the camera angles to provide a great experience for the viewer while making it easier for himself to control.
“I’ve had to hack together things in really weird and wonderful ways that weren’t apparent when you walked onto the site … but you have to do what you have to do to make it all work.”
When it all started back in 2010, a maximum of 20 people could watch at a time. One camera would be run in a gym, a score couldn’t be shown unless the camera was pointed at it and no one was streaming high school sports. Today, the entire operation has evolved as there can be unlimited viewers and there may be up to 12 cameras. There are now score bugs, tickers, announcers and instant replays, “John Madden” during replays which entails drawing on the screen as it was tested this year and will be implemented in 2022. Kobelsky also muses that it is now expected that provincial events will be live streamed.
Pandemic makes live streaming popular
This live-stream activity has covered 44 major events in the past 11 years, including 17 provincial volleyball tournaments. This option became popular when the pandemic hit, and local school graduations had to be done virtually.
Kobeslky said, “I have done streaming from four other divisions across the province and three of them have purchased systems that let them amp up their coverage of events! I have equipment lists, instructions, YouTube instructional videos that I share with them on how to cover events.
"I approach it this way … there are three levels of streaming these events:
"Person in the corner of the gym with their phone sending it to Facebook Live or something similar.
"Camera set up in the corner of the gym so that you can see the court and the scoreboard sent to YouTube or Facebook for people to view.
"Multi-camera setups (two or more) that move around following the action, with a score bug, tickers showing information, announcers (did you hear Kyle and Zenon on the bronze and gold medal games? Magical!), instant replay on multiple cameras.”
The recent provincial volleyball event was lauded for the alumni players who announced the final game and added some of their commentary, both insightful and humorous, making for an even more engaging broadcast.
You would think that this kind of work wouldn’t leave Ryan Kobelsky much spare time. However, he says in his spare time, he has two smart little girls and an amazing wife who command a lot of his time, and there’s a lot going on all the time at home.
