by Karen Costa
While our basketball players worked hard this winter season and gave us lots of exciting moments to watch on live stream, there were 2 break out stars that weren’t even on the court. Juniors Brendan Most and Matthew Nilan decided to team up and announce the home games for the boys varsity team. They were so popular and in demand, they were asked to host the last girls varsity home game as well as the last JV boys home game. Matt was the play-by-play announcer and Brendan co-hosted as the color guy. They kept their audience very entertained with their back-and-forth banter, their “fun facts” about the players and Matt’s signature catchphrase for a 3-point shot: Sha-BOOM. The 2 longtime friends explain how this all came about.
Matt said he was always interested in sports commentating and said he even does so when he watches games on tv without even realizing he’s doing it. These opportunities don’t come up often in our high school, and he thought it may be difficult to do, but he said “it turned out it only took a brief email along with a quick virtual meeting to set up a plan.” He contacted his friend, Brendan, who was hesitant at first, but knew that Matt was the perfect person to work with. They said that our AD, Tim Mullins, was instrumental in setting this up for them along with fellow student Mikaela Carroll and TD Sports who ran the live stream.
Both Matt and Brendan said that had a great time doing the play by play. “Commentating with my partner Brendan was more fun that I thought it would be by a landslide” said Matt. Brendan added, “Looking back on it now, I am so thankful that Matt asked me to do it and I got nothing but positive feedback from it.” They had note sheets on the players and the fact that these were all of their friends on the court made the commentating even more enjoyable. When asked if anything was more difficult than they expected, they both said that things went pretty smoothly. “Mr. Mullins and the cameraman made it super simple for us” Brendan said.
I think all of us can agree that watching our kids play in person is best, but for this shortened season when spectators were not allowed, having Matt and Brendan’s play by play made these live streams very entertaining. Both of them said without hesitation that they would do this again, but Brendan will be playing golf in this next season and Matt will be playing lacrosse in the spring, so it’s unclear if there will be another opportunity for them this year. Said Brendan, “I recommend other students of BBP High School give commentating a shot.” The decision hasn’t been made whether to allow spectators for the next season, but until that happens, students like Matt and Brendan helped provide a much-needed diversion.
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