Tonight, I drove away from the station at 7:08pm, after seven of the most challenging months of programming high school sports on the radio ever. I drove home completely overcome by emotion.
Our last team came close to upsetting one of the best basketball teams in the state.
The season is over.
I feel the need to document this roller coaster season for my grandchildren, and anyone else, to understand how odd this has been.
Since August of 2020, we’ve found a way to get 85+ local sports contests on-the-air during a global pandemic. A pandemic where schools were closed sometimes, remote or hybrid sometimes, and even full in-person sometimes.
The student-athletes had to deal with restrictive protocols. Masks, limited locker rooms and no fans. Athletic directors were severely challenged from ever-changing schedules to sanitizing everything to distancing the limited fans. Coaching staffs had to reinvent training programs & practices. Parents were challenged with all of it and restricted in attending games. Fans were shut out of the arenas and left to our radio and livestream broadcasts. Everyone stepped up in these challenging times and should be proud of their resiliency.
In August, we dealt with multiple schedule changes for every football program for weeks before any game kicked off. Fifty-five hours before our first game, one of our broadcasters moved on. We were blessed to find an awesome replacement with hours to spare. Then, we had an absolute deluge of rain as our teams were ready to kickoff. Tons of delays, BUT the games got played. We all felt we conquered the odds and got the season, that no one thought would happen, off the ground. That was just the first week. I should have known what the next seven months would have in store.
The rest of football season was met with game changes, COVID shutdowns, playoff reorganization and more weather issues. BUT we got 25 games on the air in 10 weeks.
Then, three weeks later, basketball tipped off. We had even more schedule changes, as we normally try to get in about 60 boys and girls games on over two stations in three and a half months.
The schedule changes were brutal. One Friday, we had 4 games scheduled for the weekend and they changed FIVE TIMES in two days.
Our team was understanding and flexible. One tested positive and I stepped in to cover his games for two weeks while he was quarantined. All without alienating the listeners or letting them see us sweat.
And, oh yeah, the February epic snow storm and brutal cold.
In all, we coordinated with 31 athletic directors, about 100 different teams, 27 arenas and stadiums, a few thousand miles and countless emails and phone calls.
We produced games in press boxes and scorers tables, BUT also on top of stadiums, in the bleachers, from end zones or tracks, stages, rafter lofts and even from the station van. We did not have to call a game from a video stream, but we were prepared to do so. We did, however, secretly help our play-by-play guys with the occasional assist from the studio while watching the livestreams to identify a ball carrier or two.
I started doing high school sports on the radio in 1987. Since then, equipment, formats, personnel, arenas, stadiums and technology have all changed. We’ve adapted to all of it, but the 2020/21 season was the most remarkable. Here’s hoping for a 21/22 season AND one that is way more normal than the last one.