Wittenberg Expands Coverage Of Athletics On Student Radio Station, Internet In 2006-2007 School Year

Rob Lehner of Gahanna, Ohio, class of 2010, prepares promotional announcements for Wittenberg athletic broadcasts in the WUSO studio.

SPRINGFIELD, Ohio — More Wittenberg University athletic events than ever before will be available in the Springfield community and throughout the world via the Internet during the 2006-07 school year. In addition to the traditional football, men's basketball and women's basketball broadcast coverage, 10 volleyball matches have been added to the schedule.

For the fourth straight year, WUSO 89.1-FM, the student-run campus radio station, will serve as the home of the Tigers on the local airwaves, while the same broadcasts will be streamed on the World Wide Web by Stretch Internet. The first broadcast of the 2006-07 school year is the Tiger football game at Capital University on Saturday, Sept. 2. Wittenberg Game Day, a one-and-a-half-hour pre-game show, will get things started at 12 p.m., with the game's kick-off slated for 1:30 p.m.

Every football, men's basketball and women's basketball game, including any potential postseason games, will be broadcast on both the student station and the Internet. In addition to the 10 regular season volleyball matches, other sports and postseason events could be added to the fall schedule, and a spring broadcast schedule will be organized soon. In past seasons, Wittenberg has offered broadcasts of selected baseball and softball games, and Internet broadcasts of last year's NCAA Division III regional volleyball tournament were also provided.

Updates to the 2006-07 broadcast schedule can be found on Wittenberg's Web site.

WUSO Adviser Scott Leo and WUSO Sports Director Josh Cohick of Erie, Pa., Wittenberg class of 2007, are coordinating the broadcasts in 2006-07. Leo, who is the play-by-play voice of the Columbus Clippers, the AAA Minor League Baseball affiliate of the New York Yankees, is entering his seventh year as a member of the Wittenberg broadcast team. He will be the play-by-play voice of Wittenberg football and men's basketball in 2006-07.

Josh Cohick of Erie, Pa., class of 2007, (left) broadcasts a 2006 Wittenberg softball game with John Strawn of Solon, Ohio, class of 2007.

Leo will also host Tiger Talk, a weekly football coaches show that can be heard from 8-9 p.m. on Thursday nights during the football season. The show, which will make its 2006 debut on Sept. 21, includes live interviews with players and coaches at Joe's Route 40 Grill in Springfield.

Cohick, also editor-in-chief of The Torch, Wittenberg's student-run newspaper, will handle play-by-play duties for volleyball broadcasts and will join Leo in the booth for football and men's basketball games as a color analyst as his busy schedules permits. Last year, Cohick was the sideline reporter for home football games and served as color analyst for men's basketball home games.

Cohick is one of several student broadcasters who will play a bigger role than ever in 2006-07. Currently, the Wittenberg broadcast team includes Rob Lehner of Gahanna, Ohio, class of 2010, Mark Kuhlman of Waterville, Ohio, class of 2010, Kevin Swagler of Monclova, Ohio, class of 2010, and John Strawn of Solon, Ohio, class of 2007. They will be involved in all parts of the broadcasts, including studio production, sideline reporting, color analysis and play-by-play duties.

Students can still get involved in the broadcasts by contacting Wittenberg Director of News Services and Sports Information Ryan Maurer at (937) 327-6114 or by e-mail.

Wittenberg partnered with Stretch to make selected sporting events available around the world for the first time in September 2003, and the results have been outstanding. Wittenberg fans do not have to pay to listen to broadcasts, and anyone with a computer and an Internet connection can log in and listen without risk of getting bumped off as a result of bandwidth limitations.

Stretch Internet utilizes QuickTime, Apple's premiere multimedia suite of products. Listeners need only to download the free QuickTime Player (it's already installed on most computers sold in the last three years), and they're ready to listen to Wittenberg games live. QuickTime has reached more than 100 million MacIntosh and PC users and works just like other popular multimedia applications such as Windows Media Player or Real Player.

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