About Me
While broadcasting has been an important part of my life for almost a decade, there are plenty of other passions, aspirations, and causes that make me me. I wanted to take a moment to share those things here to give you a little insight into the man behind the mic.
My Path
Ever since I was old enough to talk, my parents would find me pretending to broadcast sports around our house. I attended a small high school in rural Kansas where I got my first opportunity to call games before being offered an internship with a local radio station at 16. I left home to attend the Cronkite School at ASU, got my first taste of Division-I broadcasting, and became the first person in my family to graduate with a bachelor's degree in December of 2019. Even though the odds were slim, I emailed all 356 DI schools just before graduation and was hired to call women's basketball at NAU. From there, I moved again to call baseball at the University of Northern Colorado, before the Covid-19 shutdown sent me home. Less than six months later I had secured a role with Learfield as a studio host, and after spending the fall and winter with them, returned to UNCO to finish what I had started. Wanting more baseball experience I spent the summer of 2021 in Cape Cod before landing a grad assistantship to call 190 games in 2 years at Kent State.
Physical Journey
In 2021 I made a committment to start living a healthier, more active lifestyle, completely overhaul my diet, and gain the confidence to eventually get back in the gym. At my starting point, I weighed 255 lbs and had lost much of the strength I had built during my time playing sports in high school. However, less than two years later I had lost 60 lbs, reached my goal of making the 1,000 club (405 squat, 405 deadlift, 250 bench) and completely rebuilt my physical confidence.
Handling the Grind
As a relative nobody who grew up poor and came up without any references, I knew from the beginning that making a career in broadcasting would be incredibly difficult. My first mentor once told me, "you'll always be competing with people who have more talent, more connections, and more money than you do, but there's never an excuse for anyone to outwork you." These words have become my guiding principle over the years and while it's forced me to push myself to my absolute limits at times, it's paid off in the long run.
In my two years at Kent State University, I was able to...
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Broadcast 190 games across 9 different sports
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Publish over 1,000 articles between the Salina Post and KSU golf
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Fulfill all duties as primary SID for men's and women's golf
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Earn my master's in Sports Administration with a 3.75 GPA
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Produced 800+ graphics and started/ran the Salina Post Twitter
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Host a weekly show called "FlashLife" on GFTV
I also worked four jobs simultaneously while working on a pay-per-game basis at NAU, UNCO, and Learfield to keep my bills paid, and for several months, donated my own plasma at a CSL clinic to pay my rent and put myself through college at Arizona State.
Paying it Forward
I owe a great deal of my success to a small handful of mentors, peers, and friends in the industry who were willing to take the time to help me when I was just starting out. While those individuals have without a doubt helped me to blaze my own trail, there was still so much that I had to learn for myself through guesswork, failure, and trial and error. While my reach is still fairly limited, I want to make sure that I'm extending that same hand to everyone I can, and through social media and personal references, I've already been able to aid many fellow broadcasters as they get their start in the industry. I've never been fixated on money or fame, but I am driven by the possibility of showing people who grew up like I did that it doesn't matter where you come from, if you're willing to work hard enough you can achieve anything you set out to do.
