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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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Hancock Town Meeting Votes to Strike Meme Some Found 'Divisive'

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff

Hancock town meeting members Monday vote on a routine item early in the meeting.
HANCOCK, Mass. — By the narrowest of margins Monday, the annual town meeting voted to strike from the town report messaging that some residents described as, "inflammatory," "divisive" and unwelcoming to new residents.
 
On a vote of 50-48, the meeting voted to remove the inside cover of the report as it appeared on the town website and in printed versions distributed prior to the meeting and at the elementary school on Monday night.
 
The text, which appeared to be a reprinted version of an Internet meme, read, "You came here from there because you didn't like it there, and now you want to change here to be like there. You are welcome here, only don't try to make here like there. If you want to make here like there, you shouldn't have left there in the first place."
 
After the meeting breezed through the first 18 articles on the town meeting warrant agenda with hardly a dissenting vote, a member rose to ask if it would be unreasonable for the meeting to vote to remove the meme under Article 19, the "other business" article.
 
"No, you cannot remove it," Board of Selectmen Chair Sherman Derby answered immediately.
 
After it became clear that Moderator Brian Fairbank would entertain discussion about the meme, Derby took the floor to address the issue that has been discussed in town circles since the report was printed earlier this spring.
 
"Let me tell you about something that happened this year," Derby said. "The School Department got rid of Christmas. And they got rid of Columbus Day. Now it's Indigenous People's Day.
 
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