Radio DePaul is no stranger to receiving awards. In 2010, the station won the title of ‘Best Station in the Nation’ by the Intercollegiate Broadcasting System (IBS), and in 2012, IBS named Radio DePaul the ‘Best Online College Station.’ Now, Radio DePaul has one more reason to be proud: Radio DePaul Sports.
Launched this quarter, Radio DePaul Sports is a second Radio DePaul channel exclusively for sports. In the past, sports broadcasts would interrupt Radio DePaul’s regular programming, and, due to the way events are scheduled, the same shows would often get interrupted.
Radio DePaul Sports provides a new opportunity for the sports broadcasting team to expand and new educational opportunities as students are able to cover a broader range of events.
“There’s a range of opportunities here from hockey to softball to soccer to basketball, volleyball, and now we’re really only limited by how many people we have on the staff and who’s available,” Scott Vyverman, instructor and Radio DePaul’s faculty advisor, said.
Radio DePaul Sports is still a part of the same Radio DePaul station, just a channel of it. Students still work together in the same area.
“Both streams operate under the Radio DePaul name,” Vyverman said. “We just basically have two channels.”
To accommodate the sports channel, a new studio was built in the main office in the basement of University Hall. Junior and co-manager of the Radio DePaul sports team Dan Pawlowski notes that the studio is “huge,” permitting the team to “broadcast as many games as we want because we no longer have to bump shows on the main studio, which was inconvenient for everyone involved.”
Carlos Rodriguez, junior and sport director at Radio DePaul, noted that the team sought to “provide a home to our growing sports team to work on broadcasts without feeling rushed to exit a studio for other shows.”
“We worked over the summer to create our own sports studio and soon created a new sports (web) page that you will find today at radio.depaul.edu/sports, the home of Radio DePaul Sports,” he said.
As for now, the main Radio DePaul station will still have some sports programming and the main focus of Radio DePaul Sports will be for broadcasting coverage, but the staff has plans to move ahead and expand coverage.
“We want to grow Radio DePaul Sports into something more, most likely, than just a place to hear the games,” Vyverman said.
The studio will operate as a joint studio between the news team and the sports team, which Vyverman explained is becoming the norm at many major radio stations.
Vyverman knows that it will take time to make Radio DePaul Sports an entity of its own, but as he puts it, “nobody (at DePaul) discourages you from dreaming big.”
“These kids now, the students that I have that are freshmen and sophomores, by the time they’re gone, Radio DePaul Sports is going to be this thing – they’re going to help make it.”
Gabby Mikiewicz contributed to this story.
