​I don’t recall the exact day but sometime in 2007 I was approached by someone on behalf of the local KIJHL Junior B hockey team, the Princeton Posse. A new feature was about to be added to home games and would ‘broadcast’ hockey from throughout the league on the internet.
 
Although I had ‘retired’ from Broadcasting in March 1999, my name was apparently bounced around as a likely choice to head up what was going to become a regular webcast crew. The interest in my involvement was that there were hopes that I would handle the live play-by-play duties and in effect, become the online Voice of the Posse.
 
To say I was mildly interested would be a huge understatement. In my 23+ years in Radio, which traced through six different radio stations from Kelowna to Penticton to Princeton, British Columbia starting in 1978, I had done virtually every task one could do in Radio – except one.
 
Sports play-by-play was the one thing I never did in any of my on-air shifts. Sure, there was every other possible chore ranging from news reporting, advertising sales, interviews, on-location remotes, adlibbing my way out of anything, on-air shifts during the morning, afternoon, evening and overnight to transmitter runs to reset equipment and whatever else was needed.
 
However, there was never a chance to get involved in the fast-paced commentary of play-by-play Radio sports. It, quite honestly, was not a huge interest of mine. I think I may have mentioned that play-by-play was foreign to me when the Posse started to court me, but I also found it to be an interesting opportunity. I actually looked at the potential of being the Posse Webcast Guy as the final goal remaining in my Broadcasting career. If you want to call it a Bucket List item, fine. I don’t have one of those so to me, play-by-play was going to complete my Broadcasting chapter.
 
I started attending more home games. I had been a season ticket holder for a couple years by this point so I started looking at the action on ice in a very different way. I started doing a play-by-play in my head to see what it took to keep it interesting. I found it difficult.
 
Then the season ended and there was no further discussion of the webcast program.
 
The KIJHL introduced the webcast network at the start of the 2008/09 season. The Princeton Posse jumped on board immediately and was one of a handful of teams that embraced the new technology. I was pulled into the fold and did my very first Princeton Posse webcast on Saturday, September 13, 2008. Princeton got beat by Fernie 7-3 that night. All I remember about it was that the webcast was being done from the stands and people kept getting in my view and that I had a tough time following anything. I had a ‘colour guy’ who operated the camera. I had a handheld mic and little else.
 
We were on the cutting edge of the technological world of streaming live ice hockey from our arena to homes and computers around the world, provided you knew how to connect and that your internet provider could keep you connected. I suggested the webcast booth be moved to a box that was located above the scorekeepers box. It was high and overtop centre ice. The camera could be mounted just outside the box and I needed a headset. I wanted both hands free. I also needed extra volunteers. The team filled all of my requests.
 
By the time the team hit its stride that season I had a camera person, a colour guy, someone watching the feed and sending out messages via social media and someone playing music between plays. We were also picking up a following online although technical glitches tended to slow us down frequently.
 
I had also figured out how to do the play-by-play. It hit me one day that all I had to do was describe what I was seeing. I didn’t have to be fancy. I just had to tell viewers what was going on. Eventually I was able to keep up with the play and added tons of local flavour keeping in mind that family members from both teams on ice were tuning in.
 
One season the webcasts were switched to a pay-per-view system and I feared it would kill viewership. I didn’t think our product was worth paying $6-$8 per game to watch. I doubted anyone would bother. However, we kept doing our best and by the end of our fourth and fifth seasons with the PPV webcasts we had the second-most viewed webcast in the league. All teams by this time were using the internet for this purpose and the PPV system provided a way of tracking traffic.
 
After five seasons of play-by-play I was getting tired. My life was changing and I wasn’t sure I could keep doing the games and keep the standard at the level it had been at that point. The new head coach of the team at the time virtually talked me into staying. My last season was not my favourite, but I knew in my head all through the season that it would be my last.
 
I started a freelance writing business out of my home in January 2014 to assist us in creating cash flow when our primary business, a weekly community newspaper, was suffering from a sagging economy and the switching of the industry to digital news delivery. It hit us hard and I knew I could not return to the webcast booth.
 
My very last Princeton Posse webcast was February 22, 2014. It was the end of an uninterrupted series of 181 webcasts in a row which included exhibition games during more than one season and play-off games in a couple of seasons. The Posse beat Grand Forks in that game with a score of 10-5. All I remember of that game was that I was finally free to focus on the changes going on in my life. My wife, Brenda, became a ‘hockey widow’ on weekends when there were home games as she wouldn’t see much of me.
 
I tried to get her interested by bringing her to the odd game but it didn’t spark any interest in her whatsoever. That was okay as “Hockey Night in Princeton,” as we called it, I’d have my deal to do and Brenda got a private ‘Girl’s Night’ at home where she would curl up with a pizza in front of the TV. It worked for us for six hockey seasons.
 
Two years passed.
 
In May 2016 Brenda and I decided to shut down our newspaper in an effort to stop the bleeding. The process of winding down the business started in July and we began the physical closure of our downtown storefront office in August. We were two days away from being out of the space which would have meant all services, including telephone, would have been disconnected.
 
The phone rang. It had been days since it had.
 
It was the Princeton Posse’s current Associate Coach Lance Vaillancourt. He wanted to discuss the possibility of me returning to the Webcast Booth – something I hadn’t even considered as I was still navigating the closure of the newspaper, helping Brenda with her ambitious venture into weekly vending of a sideline business of hers and planning my future as a freelance writer.
 
Lance wanted to talk to me face-to-face and knew far more about me than I knew about him. A few hours later he and Posse Head Coach and General Manager Geoff Goodman were at the front door of our mostly empty office.
 
Long story, short I started my seventh season as play-by-play online webcaster for the team with the regular season home opener Friday, September 9, 2016. The Posse lost to North Okanagan 4-3. It was Webcast #1 although in reality for me it was Webcast #182.
 
The Webcast Booth is different and back on the side of the arena where I did my very first one for the team back in 2008 – actually, it sits a few feet away from the precise location. It’s a luxury box compared to what I had been using. What made everything easy for me to return was the overall feel of game nights. Virtually all the same volunteers are still doing what they were doing when I had left the organization.
 
It was a nice fit and I felt as if I had not been gone for two seasons at all.
 
Although I had not even thought about resuming webcasts for the Princeton Posse I’m glad to be back. It’s also great to have the support of the coaches and team. Game nights are great nights to be in Princeton Arena and I’m grateful to be back in the middle of all the action.

​Well, it has been a few days since we walked away from our downtown storefront location and life goes on. It hasn’t really slowed down all that much, either. I feel as if I am almost as busy as I was when I still had daily newspaper chores to do. The main difference at this point is that I now have a home office I work out of and although most of our house and shed are stuffed with boxes of things from the newspaper office, I am still able to focus on my freelance work.
 
I started writing freelance in January 2014 as a way to earn some extra cash when things slowed down at our newspaper business. I don’t think I realized at the time that it would eventually lead to my new full-time career. That was never the reason why I started it but over the course of the first year and a bit it started to produce results that got me thinking that I could possibly transition into freelance writing as a semi-retirement plan.
 
I currently am writing for a handful of different clients. I have a total of six regular clients in Australia who make up the majority of my jobs. Of them four are husband/wife combinations and I write for each separately. In addition to those regular clients I write for one Canadian and two American clients. Two of them are new clients I picked up in the past month and one I wrote for about 18-months ago who contacted me last month with another long-term project.
 
I can insert other small jobs into the flexible schedule I have with all my other clients as I don’t really have a huge workload at this point. When I was writing freelance on a part-time basis it was strictly in the evenings for about three hours a night. That meant a number of jobs got carried over into the follow night or several nights. Now that I can put a six or eight hour day to my writing chores, and not after a full day at the office, I find I am getting jobs done quicker.
 
Once I get all of my computer gear relocated into the home office I will be able to do much more than freelance writing and that will make things better overall. At the present time I will also be working on personal online projects including a handful of my websites and other website projects and podcasts on my podcast channel “Ninja on the Loose” which I launched in July 2016. Add to this internet webcasting chores during the winter where I will be providing play-by-play for the local Junior B hockey club plus freelance writing for a local online newspaper AND various volunteer responsibilities and you can see what I mean about not really slowing down.
 
Weekends throughout the summer and into September have also including vending chores with my wife, Brenda. She produces a number of interesting jams, jellies, relishes and salsas under the JamBusters! name. I have been a big part of the success of that product as I handle all the online elements promoting the items as well as being an active on-site product salesman when we are at a vending venue. I’m not sure how I would be able to fit all of that in with the hours I used to put in at the newspaper but it happened.
 
What I am enjoying the most at this point is being able to sleep in if I want and the freedom to go to work upstairs whenever I want and wearing whatever I want. Typically I’m working in pajamas or jeans with a t-shirt. The weather is no longer a factor in my clothing selection and any time I feel like taking a break during the day, I do. I even have lunch at home daily! I can’t tell you the last time I did that on a regular basis.
 
There are still a number of things yet to do in order to get the house and home office in perfect harmony, but that will happen and it will start soon. My main goal was to be able to shift gears from working at my business downtown to working at my new business at home quickly and seamlessly. I think I have accomplished that without any major glitches or hurdles. It has been an interesting trip so far and I am looking forward to seeing where it takes me from here.