Sports media students step up to the plate through growing baseball league pipeline
“The best classroom is a ballpark,” said Bill Roth, professor of practice in the School of Communication.
As baseball season kicks off across the country, the players on the field aren’t the only ones with their eyes on the major leagues. Virginia Tech School of Communication students are chasing their own dreams in broadcast booths around the country.
Since sports media and analytics launched as an academic major in the fall of 2019, students have spent their summers serving as play-by-play broadcasters for their respective teams.
“The best classroom is a ballpark,” said Bill Roth, professor of practice in the School of Communication. “Baseball is the best learning lab because you’re doing games every day. It’s the ultimate challenge in preparation, plus learning how to build relationships in dugouts, batting cages, and on long bus rides as well at the broadcast booth.”
Students receive play-by-play reps calling games during the school year through broadcasting courses and organizations such as 3304 Sports, the student-led sports media hub within the sports media and analytics program. These opportunities allow students to develop their skills in the winter so they can be ready to call games in the summer — and teams around the country have taken advantage.
Many teams have established pipelines with Virginia Tech, selecting sports media and analytics students to be their voices for the season. Just 35 miles up the road from the Blacksburg campus, the Salem Red Sox is preparing for its fifth-consecutive season with a student from the program behind the mic.
“It certainly hasn’t been surprising, but I’ve been very impressed by just the professionalism of every single student that has come through here,” Salem Red Sox General Manager Allen Lawrence said. “All of the student broadcasters that have come from Virginia Tech are just very professional and very polished. If you weren’t looking at them and you were just listening to them, you would have no idea that they were college-aged kids.”
Five undergraduate students have spent summers with the Red Sox since Virginia Tech’s partnership with Salem began in 2021. The opportunity to broadcast games for a major league affiliate organization is rare for college broadcasters, and just like the players on the teams, they view it as an elite place to develop and get reps.
“Working in Minor League Baseball has always been a dream of mine,” said sophomore Braden Schenck. “The path through the minor leagues is kind of the same path for the players and broadcasters. You’ve got to work your way through minors to get to the major leagues one day. For me to start that process while I’m still in college is really exciting.”
Schenck will be the play-by-play voice for Salem this summer, and the Connecticut native is looking forward to calling games for an organization he grew up close by.
“I grew up about three hours from Fenway [Park], and I’ve gone to around 20 games there,” Schenck said. “It’s really cool to be able to work in an organization like the Red Sox that is just so pedigreed and has so much tradition.”
One of the reasons the partnership has found so much success is because of the juxtaposition between the players on the field and the student broadcasters in the booth. Salem, the Red Sox low-A affiliate, is the starting point for the careers of many young players, most of whom are between 18 and 21 years old, chasing their dreams in a place hundreds of miles from where they grew up.
“I think because of the fact that the broadcasters can relate to the players and to what they’re going through, they’re able to read the room,” Lawrence said. “I think that’s worked well — having a similar age has really led to a lot of the success of the program.”
Salem isn’t the only team that has developed a pipeline for sports media and analytics students.
Similar to the way major league organizations scout for talent on the field, teams will look nationally for their summer broadcasters — and Virginia Tech has been a gold mine for many organizations.
The St. Cloud Rox in Minnesota, a member of the Northwoods league, has had a Virginia Tech student in the booth for six of the last seven summers. Despite being over 1,000 miles away from Blacksburg, the team still pulls from the program for its on-air talent from the area. Sophomore Riley Klaus will be in the booth for the Rox this summer.
“I think [the pipeline] is what everybody wanted to build when sports media and analytics started,” said Jake Lyman, a 2022 graduate of the program and former St. Cloud broadcaster. “You want to build these pipelines like Syracuse or Arizona State have these pipelines in the Cape Cod league. We want those [internships] throughout the country so that we know that for all of these summer internships, they’re not just looking at Syracuse and Arizona State — they’re considering Virginia Tech in the same tier.”
Lyman, now the voice of Vanderbilt University's women’s basketball program, credits the relationship building with teams as the catalyst for Virginia Tech developing these pipelines.
“It’s just getting the VT name out there and building those relationships,” Lyman said. “I feel like once some sports media and analytics students go through [an organization] we've done a pretty good job of leaving a good impression and making them continue to come back for us for future summers.”