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News Nuggets, 03.21.06
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Compiled from staff reports and electronic dispatches

VanSant family visitation, memorial announced

Arrangements have been scheduled for Dr. Henry VanSant, former East Carolina football player, coach, athletic administrator and hall of fame member, who died March 16 at age 70.

A memorial service will be conducted Thursday at 11 a.m. at First Presbyterian Church in Greenville.

There will be a reception and family visitation held Wednesday, beginning at 5 p.m., at Harvey Hall in the Murphy Center on the ECU athletic campus adjacent to Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium.

In lieu of flowers, memorials gifts may be made to the ECU Educational Foundation, for the Henry VanSant Scholarship Endowment, ECU Ward Sports Medicine Building, Suite 304, Greenville, NC 27858-4353; or the McConnell-Raab Hope Lodge, 930-A Wellness Drive, Greenville, NC 27834.

ECU makes strong start in outdoor season

Senior Hector Cotto and freshmen Jerek Hewett and Brandon Small each captured individual titles while junior Terrance Myers earned NCAA regional qualification in the hammer throw to lead East Carolina at the season-opening Shamrock Invitational over the weekend at the Coastal Carolina Track & Field Complex.

Cotto easily cruised to the championship in the 110-meter hurdle event with a time of 14.73, according to a release from ECU sports media relations, while Hewett and Small, both making their collegiate outdoor debut, won the 100-meter (10.71) and 400-meter (47.87) sprints, respectively.

Myers bested the NCAA regional qualifying mark of 55.63 in the hammer with a second-place effort of 58.40 meters, which also surpassed his previous career best of 58.25 set during last season's Conference USA Championships in Houston.

In all, ECU athletes earned a total of 22 top 10 individual finishes during the meet and added two relay titles, winning both the 4x100 and 4x400-meter medals.

Webcasts supplement CBS tourney ratings

Michael Hiestand of USA Today has reported that CBS averaged 5.3% of U.S. TV households in each game broadcast window for the first three days of the NCAA Tournament, down from 5.4% at this point last year — but the average was its highest since 1998.

The response to online Webcasts of CBS coverage exceeded network projections. Last year CBS charged $20 for the package, which allows users to see games not being shown on their local station. This year CBS decided to make the Webcasts free in hopes of attracting more eyeballs and thus more ad revenue. That would more than compensate for losing the online user fees.

It has been reported by www.ncaa.org that CBS SportsLine's NCAA March Madness on Demand has served over 14 million streams of live video from the 2006 NCAA Tournament and recorded over four million visitors during the first four days of the tournament.

The volume of the video streams and visitor traffic are believed to far surpass the total number of streams served and visits recorded for any previous live event in Internet history. NASA's online video coverage of the launch and landing of the Space Shuttle Discovery is believed to have held the previous record for largest live Internet event with more than 2.6 million visitors.

News Nuggets are compiled periodically based on material supplied by staff members; data published by ECU, Conference USA and its member schools; and reports from other sources. Copyright 2006 Bonesville.net and other publishers. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Page Updated: 02/23/2007 12:46 PM