FanWord

Christopher Aumueller (@Chris_Aumueller), CEO & Founder of @FanWord, will be joining us again this June at the #CSCUnite26 convention in Las Vegas! Aumueller, a former @NCAA DI Tennis player for the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (@UNLincoln/@Huskers), created FanWord to offer AI-powered writing solutions to athletic organizations. Learn more at #CSCUnite26: CSCommunicators.com/2026convention

🆕 𝗚𝗘𝗧 𝗧𝗢 𝗞𝗡𝗢𝗪: 𝗗𝗿𝗮𝗳𝘁 𝗠𝗼𝗱𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 Not every game calls for the same kind of recap. Some nights, the biggest story is a second-half comeback. Other times, it’s a milestone performance, a rivalry win, or a defensive battle that deserves a different tone and structure than a standard game story. Your editorial judgment has always made for great game recaps. You know when a recap needs to be shorter, sharper, more energetic, or more focused on the moment that defined the game. That’s why we created Draft Modifications inside FanWord Assist. Learn more about our newest feature: 🔗 fanword.com/blog/get-to-kn…

Demo #4 of the year – and a lot has changed just in the past month. See how to create recaps with XML & non-XML stats, generate player bios in seconds, identify award nominees, and tell better stories with @fanword Assist! 🔗 fanword.com/fanword-assist…

"Looking back, that’s where my foundation was built. Not just in how I played, but in how much I was willing to give to something I loved." Right Where I'm Meant To Be by @CarlieMuhlbach 📖 go.unl.edu/c9t2 x @fanword

✨𝗔𝗽𝗿𝗶𝗹 𝗠𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗵𝗹𝘆 𝗣𝘂𝗯𝗹𝗶𝗰 𝗗𝗲𝗺𝗼 Join us next Tuesday, April 28 for our public demo, when @MichaelMurakami takes a deep dive into FanWord Assist — our AI-powered storytelling platform for college sports communicators. You'll learn about how ~200 schools from every division use our platform to save time creating game recaps, weekly nominations, feature stories, player bios, and more. Click here to register: 🔗 fanword.com/fanword-assist…

Pumped to head out to @peakconf in Vegas on Monday. 🚀 Can't wait to connect with some of the brightest and most innovative companies, leagues, teams, and investors in sports tech. If you're attending and want to chat, shoot me a DM. ✉️ See you there. 🏔️ #Peak2026 #PEAK #PeakConf #Sportstech #sportsbiz

🆕 𝗚𝗘𝗧 𝗧𝗢 𝗞𝗡𝗢𝗪: 𝗧𝗮𝘀𝗸𝘀 The busiest moments in a sports communications office are the exact moments you can least afford to lose track of where things stand. We place a high priority on getting our partners to their core tasks quickly, so we watched you navigate the platform and thought, “let’s build a better way.” Your usage patterns not only show us how we can help you zoom around our platform more quickly, but also how we can continue to help unlock efficiency and take more off your plate. Introducing Tasks inside FanWord Assist. Tasks surface your most important next actions automatically, so when you sit down to work, you know exactly where to start. 🔗 fanword.com/blog/get-to-kn…

#D3Week Profile: Haley Jung Director of Sports Information Programs, @HUPipers Haley Jung knew what she was signing up for when she took the job at @HamlineU. One person. Twenty-two sports. Every recap, every story, every post — hers. It's the kind of role that demands creativity, efficiency, and a willingness to find smarter ways to work. Haley is a good writer — she'll be the first to tell you — and she's always looking for tools that help her do more of it. FanWord was already in the department when she arrived this past fall. She jumped in immediately, and the difference was hard to miss. "What normally would take me multiple hours to write a story, put it up on the website, and post it to social media platforms, now takes me less than half the time and gives me way less stress." For someone covering the breadth of Hamline's athletic programs solo, her time savings from using FanWord Assist turn an overwhelming night into something more manageable. Box scores go in, details get checked, and stories are live in minutes. The late nights are shorter. The pressure after the final whistle is lighter. "It gives you peace of mind that you're going to get an accurate highlight of the game into a recap in under a minute," she says. Haley brings a well-rounded background to her role — graphic design, photography, game management, and even contract social media work with @NCAAIceHockey. She's built for the full scope of what a modern sports communicator does. FanWord frees her up to actually use all of it, rather than spending every available hour just getting recaps out the door. Her advice to anyone still hesitant is straightforward: this is life-changing for anyone working as the sole recap writer, or the one person doing everything in their department. Let's toast to the hard work of Haley Jung, who is covering all 22 sports with passion and FanWord Assist — and sleeping a little better because of it. 🎉 #WhyD3

Excited to spend a few days in Kansas City for the @NAIA & @NJCAA Conventions! If you're around, @Chris_Aumueller and I would love to connect to chat some AI and @fanword! #NAIAConvention #NAIA #NJCAAConvention #NJCAA

#D3Week Profile: @chrismckeon226 Director of Athletic Communications and Media Relations, @CCCFalcons Chris McKeon has worn a lot of hats in Division III. Two-sport student-athlete. College sports communicator. Media contact. PA announcer. Video coordinator. And now, in his fifth year at Cedar Crest College, the person responsible for telling the stories of every varsity program the Falcons field — on a staff where every hour counts. That's the reality for most D3 communicators, and Chris knows it well. Before landing in Allentown, he spent five years with the @CurryColonels running communications for 15 programs. Before that, eight Division I teams with the @SienaSaints. At each stop, the constant has been the same quiet pressure, with more to cover than time to cover it. So when Cedar Crest started making a campus-wide push for AI integration, FanWord felt like a natural fit. Chris was skeptical at first, but one demo call last spring was enough. "After a call and demoing the product, I was sold," he says. 200+ days later, Cedar Crest has produced nearly 200 game recaps through FanWord, where the impact shows up in the postgame process. Instead of grinding through recaps, Chris has reclaimed time for social coverage, storytelling, and everything else that gets squeezed when the final buzzer sounds and the clock keeps running. "FanWord has helped me simplify my postgame responsibilities and has allowed myself and my team more time to focus on social media and other aspects of postgame coverage." Recaps are just the start. FanWord's suite of features for simplifying feature stories built from recorded interviews, creating player bios, and writing award nominations allows comms teams to scale, whether you're covering one sport or ten. "It doesn't just help out with recaps," he says. "FanWord can help you enhance your overall workflow, especially for the smaller shops out there." For someone who got his start as a D3 student-athlete at Mitchell College (@AthleticsMC) and has spent his entire career building communications programs, that kind of utility fits naturally into how he's always approached the job: find what works and use it to do more for the people you're covering. Chris McKeon, a true champion of Division III, shining a light on the student-athletes who deserve it. We salute you. 🎉 #WhyD3

Illinois Tech has partnered with @fanword this season to support our website content generation, and it has been a game-changer for our Athletic Communications department. Read all about it 👇

This has been a game-changer for our Athletic Communications department at Illinois Tech.

#D3Week is a celebration of what college athletics looks like when the scoreboard isn’t the whole story. At Division III schools, the communicators telling those stories are often doing it with leaner resources than their counterparts at larger programs. There’s no army of student workers for every sport, no sprawling content team to divide and conquer. There’s usually one or two people and a calendar that doesn’t stop moving. @eswillow72 knows that math well. As the Sports Information Director at Illinois Tech, he and his assistant SID are responsible for coverage across 17 sports, every platform, every game. The job has always demanded efficiency. Click below to learn more about how FanWord Assist helps D3 communicators like Eric get 90% there in 10% of the time. 🚨 𝗖𝗔𝗦𝗘 𝗦𝗧𝗨𝗗𝗬: @ILTechAthletics 🔗 fanword.com/blog/case-stud…

#D3Week Profile: @adam_ledyard Assistant AD for Communications, @GoETBUTigers Adam Ledyard has been doing this long enough to remember when "having an athletics website" was a radical idea. Twenty-six years into a career spent telling the stories of student-athletes — from @NAIA gymnasiums in the Chicago suburbs to running a department in Marshall, Texas — he's watched the industry reinvent itself more than once. First came the internet. Then social media. Now AI. And every time, his answer has been the same: get ahead of it. That instinct is part of what brought him to FanWord. "I try to tell people — you try to stay ahead of the curve in our industry," he says. "And AI is one of those ways to go." As Assistant AD for Communications at @ETBU, Adam runs a department that punches well above its weight. In 14 years, he's built one of the top D3 social media networks in Texas, raised over $150,000 in sponsorships, hosted multiple @NCAA national tournaments — including the 2024 Division III Softball Championship, where ETBU became the first modern-day program to win a national title on their home field — and won @ASC_sports Sports Information Staff of the Year three times. All with a lean staff, a big vision, and a knack for finding creative solutions. As one of the first D3 users of FanWord Assist, Adam jumped headfirst into its storytelling capabilities. One of his favorite uses was a Give Day campaign built entirely around student-athlete voices — four stories across four days, each one answering the same question: why does ETBU matter to you? The stories fed graphics, drove social content, and gave the advancement team something to work with. "I can do four stories in the time it used to take me to do one," he says. That's the kind of thinking that's defined Adam's career. Not just using tools, but bending them toward a purpose. Focused on the mission of the university, the stories of the athletes, and the community that surrounds them. His advice to anyone still on the fence? "AI is not going away. It’s not gonna replace you. It’s there to help you, and it’s helped me get home 2 or 3 hours earlier to see my family." Adam Ledyard, we salute your lifetime of service to student-athletes across @NCAADIII and your passion for storytelling. 🏆 #WhyD3

🆕 𝗚𝗘𝗧 𝗧𝗢 𝗞𝗡𝗢𝗪: 𝗡𝗼𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 Monday morning has a way of arriving before you're ready for it. The weekend's games are wrapped, the recaps are posted, and somewhere in the middle of everything else on your plate, there's a nomination window with your name on it — or several, if you're covering more than one sport. SIDs all across America get it done. That's not the question. The question is how much of your Monday it takes to build a submission-ready case for every athlete who earned one — across every sport, every week, through final postseason honors. We built Nominations inside FanWord Assist to give you that time back. 🔗 fanword.com/blog/get-to-kn…

@CollSportsComm @NCAADIII @KTG_012 @AGutierrez_WPI What a great group of leaders 🙌 Special shoutout to FanWord partners @adam_ledyard , @wilsonali24 , and Jill Weigel.

During @NCAADIII #D3Week we salute our CSC Division III Cabinet! These leaders serve in governance and leadership for our organization, representing schools and conferences from across the country. Thank you for all you do to support our members in D3! @KTG_012 @AGutierrez_WPI @adam_ledyard @steve_sheri @jillcw23 @tiaadayy @DrewWilsonSID @brettmarhanka @alilwilson24 @pmpcipriano @d3sida

#D3Week Profile: @cardinaltwit Director of Athletic Engagement & Fundraising, @wes_athletics Karen Whalen has seen Wesleyan athletics from almost every angle. Fifteen-plus years will do that. What's never changed is what moves people: the stories behind the scoreboards, and the relationships that outlast them. As Director of Athletic Engagement & Fundraising, Karen connects Wesleyan's varsity programs with its broader donor and alumni community, which is less about what happened last game and more about what someone felt when they last wore a Wesleyan uniform. Her job is to find the emotional thread that connects a former Cardinal athlete to the department — and storytelling is one of the most powerful tools she uses to do so. "FanWord has been a force multiplier for us," she says. For 30 programs and a lean staff, the time needed for storytelling the Wesleyan way was missing. FanWord helped close the gap by creating a structure that allowed student contributors to surface meaningful stories that might otherwise go untold. Stories that go beyond telling. Stories that reconnect. From Karen's seat, that's the whole point. "We're now able to regularly produce feature stories that go well beyond the box score — highlighting the people, experiences, and impact that resonate with alumni and donors." That's a communications win, a fundraising win, and a community win, all long after the final whistle. For Division III institutions like Wesleyan, a platform that feels like it's built for them — and not a one-size-fits-all solution — allows those wins to keep coming. "It feels collaborative, not transactional," she says. Karen Whalen, thank you for the care you bring to Wesleyan every day, for every athlete, current and former. 🎉 #WhyD3

#D3Week Profile: @wilsonali24 Assistant Commissioner, @AmerRiversConf Ali Wilson has spent her career telling the stories that don't always make the highlight reel. As Assistant Commissioner at the American Rivers Conference, she works at the Division III level — a place where the rosters are deep, the staffs are small, and the stories are just as worth telling as anywhere else in college athletics. She knows that world firsthand. Ali is a former D3 student-athlete herself, and those experiences are why she shows up so passionately for A-R-C student-athletes. "It is fun and important to spotlight Division III stories," she says. And she means it, not simply as a talking point, but as a practice. Two years ago, Ali and the American Rivers Conference partnered with FanWord. She'll be the first to tell you she was skeptical about using AI, but she was also honest with herself and the reality most small college communicators face: lean staffs, tighter budgets, and more ground to cover than ever. "Most Division III staffs are 1–4 people," she says. "FanWord allows individuals to get more work done in a shorter amount of time." What won her over was the specificity. FanWord wasn't built for all people, everywhere. It was built for her industry, with features specific for communications in college sports. All in all? She says, "Working with FanWord has been one of my favorite parts of my job." Ali Wilson, we see you too. We're glad you're in this industry — and we're proud to be in your corner. 🎉 #WhyD3

“And if there’s one lesson lacrosse and VMI have taught me, it’s that the most meaningful accomplishments often come after the toughest challenges.” Read more about Ty Yonas, Earning The Way Back, at rahvamil.vmikeydets.com. #RahVaMil