MCC sports taking to airwaves

Jeff Moses

     Mesa Community College athletics has made its way on to internet radio thanks to the efforts of sports information director Wayne Bloch.

            “We got it started actually, I guess about the beginning of December, almost a month into basketball season,” said Bloch who does all of the commentary with his assistant Legend sports editor Aaron Webster.

            “It’s something that I had done at the school I used to be at previously Christopher Newport University. We started doing it there back in 2004 and when I got here I started thinking about it,” said Bloch, “Arizona western, Snow , and Scottsdale all have it so we are trying to make sure we get at least as far up the latter as they are.”

            Since getting the broadcasts going every home MCC athletic event has been broadcast onto “T-Bird Sports Live,” which can be accessed by going to ihigh.com/mesacc, or by following the link from the main athletics website athletics.mesacc.edu.

            Women’s and men’s basketball were not much of a challenge for Bloch because they are really the only sports happening from late November until late January.

            But spring sports have posed some issues, “all kinds of problems with baseball and softball the main problem is there is no internet access out there at the field. Either one of them so you can’t do anything live. We tried doing recording games and then putting them on the website later that works ok.”

            MCC softball pitcher Braylee Butcher definitely appreciates the radio broadcasts, “oh it’s really cool, very nice especially for when my parents are out of state they love listening to a play by play of the games.”

            Butchers parents Ryan and Lisa live in Murray Utah, so attending games that their daughter pitches is not always an option.

“We love it. You know we live in Utah and our daughter plays softball all the way in Arizona so we listen to all of the games sometimes multiple times,” said Ryan Butcher ,”we usually know the outcome beforehand because of Braylee, but we love to hear all the details and play-by-play.”

Butcher’s parents in Utah are not the only out of state fans Bloch’s radio programs are reaching Haley Thompson of MCC women’s basketball hails from Australia, and her parents listen to all of her games from the land down under.

The traffic on MCC’s athletic website has also seen a boost this year, “since Sept.,1 when more sports started, we are up just about 15, said Bloch, “we have risen from 56,632 to 66,028 over the same period a year ago. I think if we are able to start doing video of many sports next year that will go up even more.”

  • Mesa Legend Staff

    These are archived stories from Mesa Legend editions before Fall 2018. See article for corresponding author.

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