If you were to go up to any high school student that lives in Fairfield County and ask them, “Do you know what the HAN Network is?,” most of them would say “of course!”

For high school students, the HAN Network is a news website that is most known for their live broadcasting of FCIAC sporting events. However, on June 20, HAN released a statement that they would be exiting the live broadcasting business due to the completion of a 3-year contract with the Fairfield County Interscholastic Athletic Conference. In a press release from the HAN Network website, the CEO Martin V. Hersam said, “We are very proud of the financial investment we made in the FCIAC as well as the body of work our broadcasting team produced.”

Their network’s features gave publicity to the sports and athletes during their seasons – especially the captain interviews they did with every school, for every sport, during every season. HAN Network did a lot to keep up with the sports teams in the FCIAC division and to keep everyone else updated on the latest scores. “We are very proud of that,” Hersam added.

The disappearance of the HAN Network from FCIAC sports shocked a lot of athletes, and many were disappointed. Getting interviewed by the HAN Network staff was a highlight of many athlete’s seasons, something they looked forward to.

Stamford High School senior and girls field hockey co-captain Brycelin Stalteri said, “I was looking forward to being interviewed and being able to share the team’s expectations for the season.” She also discussed how she was disappointed, as were most of the players on the team.

With the exiting of the HAN Network, however, student journalists at The Round Table are excited to filling in some of the gaps in sports coverage at Stamford High. Our student journalists are motivated to cover sporting events and talk to team captains, since HAN will no longer be filling that role.

Round Table sports editor Ross Green said, “I was surprised when they released they were not going to do their thing anymore. They did great work with every game and captain interviews, but now Nick [Otis, co-sports editor] and I are going to try and pick up their slack as best as we can.”

Even though this is disappointing and the end of an era for high school athlete’s, it will give our editors and journalists a chance to branch out into a wider variety of sports stories. HAN’s loss is our gain, and The Round Table will be able to take this opportunity and run with it.