Have you ever seen clips from high school sports games and noticed that there is usually never anyone announcing the games? That has always been the case when watching Berkley athletic events streamed on the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) website until this basketball season. The website is a partnership between the high school and the website, which allows them to stream their athletic events as well as add audio feed to it. Aside from producing the weekly news, the news and broadcasting class has started announcing the home girls’ and boys’ basketball games live in person all streamed to the NFHS website. As of this past season, juniors Noah Katkowsky, Cameron Duerr, and Henry Samson broadcasted the games and all shared with me their experiences so far and what it has been like as first time announcers.
Katkowsky stated that even though this was the first time students broadcasted games, this idea was in their minds for a while, explaining that “Many people in [their] class had the idea of broadcasting games, and many people in [their] class love sports. He added by saying that sports broadcasting is something that he is interested in pursuing as a career and that “It was a very good start for [him] to learn the basics of broadcasting and how to operate during a live game.” In order to get the audio onto the website, they had to communicate their idea to Mr. Rawlik. After the parties agreed on the idea, they set up the equipment to get onto the website and the announcing began.
In most cases in sports announcing booths, there is a play-by-play announcer and an analyst. The three students created a rotation system where each person took turns handling play-by-play duties, analyst duties, and statistics for each game.
When announcing the games, the three sit in the last row of the bleachers behind the Bears bench. It was all business for the trio as the games would tip off. All three of them collaborated with each other to make sure everything went smoothly, and they all described their first announcing duties as a major success.
Katkowsky said, “I’ve always wanted to announce games before and this was a perfect start. It was low-stress and was an awesome start to broadcasting. I really felt that we had good chemistry as well between the three of us which made it go even more smoothly.
Samson put weight on how they improved throughout the season saying, “I definitely think we all got better in terms of talking clearer and making sure we were explaining the game to the audience as well as possible.”
Duerr touched on how cool it was to be broadcasting games in general saying, “It’s always been something I have wanted to do and this was a perfect start.”
With most things in life, before achieving perfection there are many growing pains. As first-time student broadcasters all three of them agreed that there are things they can improve on. Katkowsky touched on having more energy saying, “I really think we can work on making sure we are announcing with excitement and speaking louder into the microphones. I also think saying less words such as ‘um’ and having less awkward pauses will benefit us.”
Samson also added onto what Katkowsky said by saying, “We definitely need to improve on our vocals. I think if we just project our voices a bit louder it will improve the overall quality of the broadcast.”
Duerr put an emphasis on improving equipment saying, “If I could change one thing it would for sure be the headsets. Sometimes the microphones pick up some words and sometimes they don’t. I know there are better headsets out there but we are making the best of what we currently have.”
Looking to the future, the class plans to continue broadcasting games. The NFHS website also allows viewers to watch Berkley girls and boys soccer, basketball, wrestling, baseball, softball, volleyball, and football games. The three not only plan on continuing with basketball, but expanding into those other sports listed above. So, whether you’re on one of the sports teams and watching game film or wanting to watch games live on your devices, make sure to keep your ears open for the news and broadcasting students!
