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Doing radio play-by-play is harder than it looks

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By MARTY MILLER, Hernando Today correspondent

Published: December 4, 2007

No matter whom it is, at some time in every sports fan's life when they were sitting in front of a television or listening to a game on the radio, he or she has said out loud or to a friend, "You, know, I could do that. I could do play-by-play just as well as that guy."

The problem with that is that doing sports broadcasting is a lot harder than many people think.

Take for example the job that Hernando Today sports editor Tony Castro has achieved each Friday night during the football season as the radio voice of WWJB (AM) 1450 during Hernando County High School's "Football Game of the Week."

Each week during the prep football season, Castro calls the play-by-play action involving a Hernando County team for the local AM station.

Since graduating from the University of Southern California with a degree in broadcast journalism (minor in political science) and then relocating from Los Angeles to Florida in 1984, Castro has done prep football, basketball and baseball games on the radio.

Castro has written sports - concentrating in prep athletics -- for the Zephyrhills News, the Winter Haven New Chief, the Tampa Tribune, the St. Petersburg Times before joining the Hernando Today team in October of 2000.

Besides his passion for writing, the 49-year-old Castro has done play-by-play for the Hernando County grid games for the Brooksville station for five years after 12 years in the same capacity with WPAS (AM) and WZHR (AM) 1400 in East Pasco County.

His last football broadcast came two weeks ago when he did the play-by-play of the state playoff game between North Marion and Nature Coast Technical in Citra.

"I always get people coming up to me and saying, 'Gee, what a great job you have,' or 'I guess doing radio isn't a very tough job," he said recently. "But doing radio play-by-play is a lot harder than people realize."

First game

Like most broadcasters, Castro said he first became hooked as a kid growing up in Southern California. He was born in Long Beach, California, the oldest of three boys to a career Navy officer.

"I used to keep score watching NBC's 'Game of the Week' on Saturdays like everybody else and I think it really helped me that they had so many tremendous broadcasters in Los Angeles at the time. We had Vince Scully with the Dodgers, Dick Enberg doing the Angels and the Rams and Chick Hearn doing the Laker games. Those three are Hall of Fame broadcasters. To me, they were great teachers, great inspirations."

At USC, Castro interned at hugely popular KIIS-FM in Los Angeles. He wrote early morning sports copy for News Director Liz Fulton while Rick Dees starred during morning drive time.

Castro moved to Zephyrhills following the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles in August, 1984 to work for the Zephyrhills News as the sports editor.

"They say that you don't start (working) in LA or New York, it's where you finish," commented Castro, who resides in Spring Hill and has a 9-year-old daughter, who attends Woodland Elementary in Zephyrhills. "So I did like most of the guys did who I went to school with, I found a small paper to start with. And my brother was always telling me how great it was in Florida, so I moved to Zephyrhills and got a job with the paper."

In '84, he also began doing games of the Bulldogs on the radio with ZHS basketball coach Ernie Pittman as his analyst.

"I did football, baseball and basketball," recalled Castro "And Ernie was my wing man on football and whenever he could do it during basketball and baseball."

Then in 2000, Castro took a job with Hernando Today as a sports writer.

But at the time, WWJB had stopped doing broadcasts of Hernando County prep football games.

"(WWJB) The station knew me from my time doing radio of Zephyrhills games and contacted me about doing Hernando High games in 2001 and we hooked up," recalled Castro.

With color analyst Steve Imhoff and occasionally his brother Carlos as the sideline announcer, Castro does a "Game of the Week" for the radio station.

His broadcast background has also paid dividends in producing the "Hernando County Countdown to Kickoff" preseason football show in cooperation with Hernando County Instructional Television's (HITV) Channel 14 the past two seasons.

Behind the mike

When talking about calling football games on the radio, Castro says that preparation is the most important thing.

"Just like in writing, the more you prepare, the better the job you do," he said. "Each week I talk with both coaches and do a halftime feature on a player or a coach and the things you pick up talking to the coaches help solidify the broadcast."

With the Internet, it's now easier to listen to prep football broadcasts from around the country and to be honest, some of them can be more than a little one-sided.

Fortunately for the radio listeners of Hernando County, Castro doesn't believe in that.

"Sometimes I've listened to high school games from Georgia and at times," he said. "Some of those guys really do sound like fans instead of broadcasters."

In the game against North Marion, the Sharks went into it as prohibitive underdogs as the Colts came in as the No. 2 ranked team in the state.

Unlike doing University of Florida games where you have a dozen production people and people who do nothing but identify players, accumulate statistics and provide the announcer with everything he could possibly need in a broadcast, doing high school football is completely different. And when doing the NCT game, those differences showed up.

North Marion has a very small press box and no available phone line. So when Castro did the broadcast of the football game, he and Imhoff had to do it with the help of a cell phone, which shut off seven or eight times during the 38-degree weather.

And because a person has no one but himself to depend on during a radio broadcast of a high school football game, Castro said it's important to know everything.

"To do a game (at this level), you have to know your equipment, the teams, and to have done your homework," insisted Castro.

And since WWJB isn't close to a 100,000-watt giant, not many people can hear the game outside of a 30-mile radius.

So this is how Castro described the Sharks' first touchdown of that game, a 4-yard run by Tevin Drake in the second quarter. It also shows how tough doing high school games can be because during the call, the cell phone he was using went out.

"Toss pitch to Drake. Three, two, one, he's inside, he's---waiting for the signal. Touchdown Sharks. The clock is stopped now, 10:18 to go in the second quarter. The touchdown run by Tevin Drake, his 21st touchdown of this season. All set up by Mike..."

While Castro says he never has sent out audition tapes of any of his games to another station or network to see about getting a job as a broadcaster, he enjoys doing the games.

"I've done football, basketball and baseball and of the three, I would say baseball is the easiest," he commented. "But the hardest I think would be doing hockey or possibly horse racing. Now, those announcers have a tough job."

If someone out there doesn't think doing a high school game on the radio is tough, try this little test.

Take a recorder, start watching any game on TV, turn the recorder on and do five minutes of play-by-play yourself. Then you may begin to see the job is a lot harder than what most fans imagine.

Even Castro would agree.

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