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Williams Alumni Fly with Peacock to PyeongChang

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NBC Sports is sending a large crew to cover the 2018 Winter Olympics being held in PyeongChang, South Korea. Six former Eph varsity athletes will be on site and one will be in Connecticut, making sure the Winter Games receive coverage in the United States.
 
Pretty impressive for a highly regarded national liberal arts college that does not teach journalism, TV production, or TV journalism.
 
The PyeongChang games will be the first Winter Olympics to have more than 100 events in 15 sports. It runs from Feb. 9 through Feb. 25 
 
The on-site producer for NBC Sports is 1983 Williams graduate Sam Flood. Flood will be working his 13th Olympics. His first Olympics experience was working as a researcher for the 1988 Summer Olympics that were staged in Seoul, South Korea.
 
At Williams, Flood was a captain of the Ephs' men's ice hockey team.
 
Stateside, Flood serves as the executive producer and president for production for NBC’s coverage of NASCAR, IndyCar, Formula One, horse racing, Tour de France and Football Night in America. To date, Flood has won 29 Emmys.
 
Tim Layden '78, who played basketball for the Ephs, will be doing feature stories for both Sports Illustrated and NBC throughout the Olympics.
 
Layden has compiled an acclaimed career at Sports Illustrated as a features writer. Many Ephs regard his story "The Forgotten Hero,” which was selected as one of the 60 best stories in Sports Illustrated in the magazine's first 60 years, to be his very best.
 
Former Eph football player Rob Hyland '97 will be producing the figure skating competitions in PyeongChang. In the U.S., Hyland's duties center around producing NBC's horse racing schedule and Notre Dame football.
 
Matt Marvin '98, who played both football and baseball at Williams, will produce the men's ice hockey competition in PyeongChang and both of the women's ice hockey medal games. Stateside, Marvin's primary duties revolve around NASCAR and the NHL.
 
Matt Casey '03, another two-sport athlete for the Ephs competing in both football and baseball, will not be in PyeongChang but rather in the home office in Stamford, Conn., where he will be producing NBCSN's primetime coverage. 
 
Casey and his crew will focus on figure skating, Nordic skiing, Alpine skiing, ice hockey, and curling among others. Casey and his crew are essentially providing the glue and road map getting viewers from sport-to-sport, providing live look-ins, updates, highlights, and interviews. 
 
Stateside, Casey is involved in the production of Football Night in America and he oversees the production of ProFootballTalkas well as producing studio coverage of the NHL Draft and an occasional college basketball game.
 
Fresh off his work at Super Bowl LII, Jake Abrahams '14 (golf captain) will be working as a writer on the NBCSN studio show hosted by Carolyn Manno. On the NBC Super Bowl LII pre-game show, Abrahams made a cameo appearance when he asked the Patriots' James Harrison what it was like to be "behind enemy lines" having left the Steelers after a long tenure to join the Patriots near season's end.
 
Stateside, Abrahams, a standout researcher and writer, has been placed on many projects from the Super Bowl to the NHL Winter Classic and has a large role with NBC's coverage of the NHL.
 
Former Eph football player and wrestler Adam Datema '15 will be involved with logistical/technical work technician in PyeongChang. Stateside, Datema has been involved in a plethora of other projects for NBC Sports, most recently graphics.
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Williamstown Fire Committee Talks Station Project Cuts, Truck Replacement

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Prudential Committee on Wednesday signed off on more than $1 million in cost cutting measures for the planned Main Street fire station.
 
Some of the "value engineering" changes are cosmetic, while at least one pushes off a planned expense into the future.
 
The committee, which oversees the Fire District, also made plans to hold meetings over the next two Wednesdays to finalize its fiscal year 2025 budget request and other warrant articles for the May 28 annual district meeting. One of those warrant articles could include a request for a new mini rescue truck.
 
The value engineering changes to the building project originated with the district's Building Committee, which asked the Prudential Committee to review and sign off.
 
In all, the cuts approved on Wednesday are estimated to trim $1.135 million off the project's price tag.
 
The biggest ticket items included $250,000 to simplify the exterior masonry, $200,000 to eliminate a side yard shed, $150,000 to switch from a metal roof to asphalt shingles and $75,000 to "white box" certain areas on the second floor of the planned building.
 
The white boxing means the interior spaces will be built but not finished. So instead of dividing a large space into six bunk rooms and installing two restrooms on the second floor, that space will be left empty and unframed for now.
 
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