Asher Gibbons
Sports Editor
This month, FSC Athletics announced they’d be partnering with AI software company, FanWord, to bring all postgame recaps among other storytelling devices to fans using artificial intelligence.
Unlike ChatGPT or other AI sites, FanWord “is tailored to sports communications,” according to their site, with the goal to tell sports stories faster, more in depth and more accurately.
The site is primarily used by the four main staff members at athletics: Brittany Lamele, Clay Roe, Sean Forrester and Taylor Drake. Its simplicity has made their day-to-day work lives much less hectic and has allowed them to be more creative in their work.
“It’ll allow us to focus our efforts on getting that specialized content out instead of a lesser engaging recap or story,” Roe said. “So far this year, we have created 21 recaps in about three weeks. They estimate that we have saved 630 minutes in those 21 recaps.”
During the Jet’s Pizza FSC Volleyball Classic, the group was able to create recaps for every game that took place in the tournament, including the neutral site games. Without FanWord, box scores would’ve been displayed, but not full game recaps.
The company, despite being founded in 2019, has major partnerships with large colleges such as Nebraska, Oklahoma and Virginia Tech. Within the past two years, colleges within the SSC like Palm Beach Atlantic have also signed on with FanWord.
In August, the CEO of FanWord, Christopher Aumueller, held an online presentation to explain what the company could do for FSC’s athletics department and ultimately the group decided to sign on.
How does it work? After games are played, the athletics department uploads a file of the statistics sheet and any other important information and FanWord spits out a full recap of the game within minutes.
Not only does it complete game recaps, but it also writes player biographies for the team website which was a large component of FSC’s buy-in for the program.
“The biggest piece for me that was a no-brainer is FanWord Assist can write all of our student-athlete bios. In a blink of an eye,” Associate Athletics Director Brad Bee stated.
“So literally, at the end of the season, we take a season XML or a season PDF, we upload it, and it’ll generate their personal bios, all the information that usually goes on there, that we spend months and months writing.”
Bee estimates that FanWord Assist saves days of work on player biographies alone.
“We’re using AI assist to do the job because in 2025, we have so many more things we need to do. We need to do creative stuff. Social media is way more prevalent now than it ever has been,” Bee said.
The department has already been taking advantage of the saved time by creating more social media content, which has reportedly had an impact on attendance.
Recently, the team has been participating in social media trends such as asking student athletes and coaches whether they’re team Conrad or team Jeremiah.
The major concern with AI usage nowadays is job security, especially creative fields, yet recaps are not considered creative writing.
“We didn’t cut anything. If people are wondering, we did not cut any positions signing on with this,” Bee said.
The previously mentioned four employees are not only responsible for writing the recap, but they also handle the sport management side of FSC athletics, which is the reason FanWord is so crucial to free time for the staff.
Student writers were also hard to come by because of the lack of creativity involved in the writing.
“If you find somebody that writes, let them write. And what we’ve tended to find out is a lot more people want to be more creative. They don’t want to write,” Bee said.
The department inked a three year deal for the usage of FanWord, where they’ll then evaluate whether or not it’s worth the price for the future.
“I sit back and I look at what we save in resources, what we can focus our attention on. It’s almost a no-brainer,” Bee said.
